Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
Rosa Anglica (Author: [unknown])
section 42
42
Item an imposthume that is in a principal member, and is without pain, signifies that nature has lost the guiding force428 there and especially if it be formed of sanguine humour or choler. And Damascenus says,429 a painful imposthume is seldom caused, except by hot humours, and Hippocrates says in the first book of Prognostica that the hard imposthume which is formed painlessly, is not dangerous, but if it be formed
p.193
with acute pain, it is dangerous; excepting such imposthumes formed from a humour in which are hardness and dull pain. Item430 the imposthume that does not turn to running does not cause unnatural external heat431 such as that formed by flatulence which432 becomes hard. The imposthumes that are on the noble internal members cause fever, and some of them cannot be easily felt, as are imposthumes of the chest, or lungs; and there are others hard to take hold of, such as imposthumes of the liver, the spleen, the stomach, the small intestines, the kidneys and the bladder, as says Averoes.