CHAPTER X. Of Medicines provoking urine.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Culpeper, Nicholas
The causes by which urine is suppressed are many.
1. By too much drying, or sweating, it may be consumed.
2. By heat or inflammation of the reins, or passages whereby it passes from the reins, it may be stopped by compression.
Urine is the thinnest part of blood, separated from the thickest part in the reins.
If then the blood be more thick and viscous than ordinary, it cannot easily be separated without cutting and cleansing medicines.
This is for certain, that blood can neither be separated nor distributed without heat.
Yet amongst diureticks are some cold things, as the four greater cold seeds, Winter-cherries, and the like.
Although this seem a wonder, yet it may be, and doth stand with truth.
For cool diureticks, though they further not the separation of the blood one jot, yet they cleanse and purge the passages of the urine.
Diureticks then are of two sorts:
1. Such as conduce to the separation of the blood.
2. Such as open the urinal passages.
The former are biting (and are known by their taste) very hot and cutting, whence they penetrate to the reins, and cut the gross humours there.
Bitter things, although they be very hot, and cut gross humours, yet are they of a more dry and terrene substance than is convenient to provoke urine.
Hence then we may safely gather, that bitter things are not so moist nor penetrating, as such as bite like Pepper.