Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
Rosa Anglica (Author: [unknown])

section 2

2

The cause of this sickness, as Hali says, is when nature expels towards the surface of the body, the excess of sanguine humour721 or continuous fever arising from a peccant humour, in one in whom something of the menstrual flow or corrupt boiling blood remains; therefrom results the sickness called variolae i.e. smallpox, and from the menstrual blood it is formed: and Averroes says there is no man who does not contract smallpox, and these are his words:—as an evacuatory force is in every member which sends its surplus from it to another member thence is formed smallpox, and measles, and therefore no man escapes them, and if any one be conceived722 at the time of the catamenial flow, he seldom escapes without lepra or other hateful disease.