Treatment of Jaundice

Abstract

The jaundiced should not be allowed to work, or to be gnawed by care, but lie in a soft bed and sleep in a well-lighted room: he should sing, dance and jest and feast sumptuously and water his wine. Let him be neither hot nor cold and inhale soft air and let draughts be excluded: and if a better, warmer fluid circulates in the body than before, the bile will cease to form. And to evacuate this, first give an enema, and then open a vein if there is also fever and heat, or if the menses have ceased as often seen in girls or widows. Purge as required with lenitive and syrup of white roses: and if the gallbladder or liver are blocked and swollen, open the pathways with attenuating herbs such as wild celery, calamint and chicory, caper and radish, anchusa, germander, maidenhair, agrimony, hop, gentian that rapidly restores the menses, ivy and horsehound, fern, fennel, thyme, the roots of endive and of maidenhair, syrup of china root, the simple oxymel called squill of which prepare an apozeme.