PART 16
You will find the drink, called oxymel, often very useful in these
complaints, for it promotes expectoration and freedom of breathing.
the following are the proper occasions for administering it. When
strongly acid it has no mean operation in
[p. 77] rendering the expectoration
more easy, for by bringing up the sputa, which occasion troublesome
hawking, and rendering them more slippery, and, as it were, clearing
the windpipe with a feather, it relieves the lungs and proves emollient
to them; and when it succeeds in producing these effects it must do
much good. But there are cases in which hydromel, strongly acid, does
not promote expectoration, but renders it more viscid and thus does
harm, and it is most apt to produce these bad effects in cases which
are otherwise of a fatal character, when the patient is unable to
cough or bring up the sputa. On this account, then, one ought to consider
beforehand the strength of the patient, and if there be any hope,
then one may give it, but if given at all in such cases it should
be quite tepid, and in by no means large doses. But if slightly acrid
it moistens the mouth and throat, promotes expectoration, and quenches
thirst; agrees with the viscera seated in the hypochondrium, and obviates
the bad effects of the honey; for the bilious quality of the honey
is thereby corrected. It also promotes flatulent discharges from the
bowels, and is diuretic, but it occasions watery discharges and those
resembling scrapings, from the lower part of the intestine, which
is sometimes a bad thing in acute diseases, more especially when the
flatulence cannot be passed, but rolls backwards; and otherwise it
diminishes the strength and makes the extremities cold, this is the
only bad effect worth mentioning which I have known to arise from
the oxymel. It may suit well to drink a little of this at night before
the draught of ptisan, and when a considerable interval of time has
passed after the draught there will be nothing to prevent its being
taken. But to those who are restricted entirely to drinks without
draughts of ptisan, it will therefore not be proper at all times to
give it, more especially from the fretting and irritation of the intestine
which it occasions, (and these bad effects it will be the more apt
to produce provided there be no faeces in the intestines and the patient
is laboring under inanition,) and then it will weaken the powers of
the hydromel. But if it appears advantageous to use a great deal of
this drink during the whole course of the disease, one should add
to it merely as much vinegar as can just be perceived by the taste,
for thus what is
[p. 78] prejudicial in it will do the least possible harm,
and what is beneficial will do the more good. In a word, the acidity
of vinegar agrees rather with those who are troubled with bitter bile,
than with those patients whose bile is black; for the bitter principle
is dissolved in it and turned to phlegm, by being suspended in it;
whereas black bile is fermented, swells up, and is multiplied thereby:
for vinegar is a melanogogue. Vinegar is more prejudicial to women
than to men, for it creates pains in the uterus.
