The following medicines are sudorifics: The dried powder of chamomile,
sprinkled upon oil, and rubbed briskly upon the skin, seseli, pellitory,
the seed of the rosemary, anise; and in like manner, when sprinkled upon
oil; nitre toasted, and not very fine, with oil; the flower of salt mixed
with oil; Cyrenaic juice diluted with water, which may be rubbed into the
body, and taken in a draught, to the amount of a chick-pea. Calamint, in
like manner, when drunk with honied water, and rubbed externally with oil.
* * * * *
COMMENTARY. This Section is mostly copied from Oribasius. (Synops. i,
23.) Aëtius enumerates a good many more medicines of this class. Of these
some are to be taken by the mouth, as cumin, bay berries, Cyrenaic juice,
castor, and lovage; some are to be rubbed into the skin, as nitre with
common oil, the oil of dill, of chamomile, of bays, and of radishes; and
some are to be used in fumigations, as pennyroyal, the seed of balsam,
and so forth. He recommends these medicines in jaundice, and for coldness
and constriction of the skin. (iii, 157.)
Celsus treats of the methods for producing free perspiration with more
than his usual minuteness. Sweating, he says, may be produced either
by dry heat or by baths. The modes of applying dry heat, which he
mentions, are by heated sand, the laconicum or sweating apartment of the
ancient bath (see Sect. LI), the clibanus or moveable furnace, and the
vapour-baths of Baiæ. To these he adds strong exercise. He also treats
minutely of the application of baths and fomentations for the cure of
diseases, (ii, 17.) Consult Stobæus (100.)
Haly Abbas directs us to restore the perspiration, when stopped, by
exercise, friction, baths, and the affusion of hot water over the body.
He further recommends friction with the oil of violets, and such things
as are mentioned by our author. (Pract. i, 12.)
Rhases recommends internally, castor, opoponax, or opium mixed with
honey, and given in tepid water. Externally, he recommends friction,
with the oil of chamomile, of pellitory, or the like. (Contin. 31.)
Mesue mentions fumigations with calamint, cinquefoil, carpobalsam,
and bdellium. Albengnefit recommends the same, and also friction with
calefacient oils, and the internal administration of cumin, calamint, and
the like.
The ancients, as Prosper Alpinus remarks, seem to have trusted more in
external than in internal means for producing free perspiration. They
were aware that when the system is greatly over-heated, a draught of cold
water, by reducing the temperature of the body, may prove sudorific.
This fact is distinctly stated by Galen; and, in accordance with this
principle, Rhases prescribes cold water in the hot stage of the smallpox,
to facilitate the eruption of the pustules.
On the sudatoria or vapour-baths of the ancients, see Baccius (de
Thermis, iv), and Sect. LI, below. Horace thus alludes to the
vapour-baths at Baiæ:
“Sane myrteta relinqui,
Dictaque cessantem nervis elidere morbum
Sulphura contemni vicus gemit.”
(Epist. i, 15.)
Upon which Sanadon remarks: “By _sulphura_, the poet means the stoves,
where sulphureous vapours exhaling from the earth cause a dry heat, which
provokes sweat.”
Among the artificial means used by the ancients for procuring
perspiration, we may here mention the sand-bath, as it was called, which
consisted in rolling the body in sand heated by the sun. (Cælius Aurel.
Tard. Pass, iii, 4; Avicenna, i, 2, 2, 20.)
Strong friction in the sun was also used as a means for producing
perspiration. See, in particular, Avicenna (i, 2, 2, 20.)