accordance
with the strength of the patient, the character of the swelling, the
pulsation, distention, heat and redness of the affected part. But it
should be repeated frequently, and this bloodletting then frequently
suffices, in itself, to cure the disease.

Gilbert continues: "I will tell you also what I myself saw in a woman
suffering and screaming with pain in her right wrist (_assuere_?),
which was greatly swollen, hot, red and much distended. She was fat,
full-blooded, and before the attack had lived freely on milk and
flesh. Accordingly she was robust, and I bled her from the basilic
vein of the left hand and the saphena of the right foot, both within
an hour. Each hour I withdrew a half-pound of blood, then I fed her
and for three hours I drew half a pound of blood from the saphena. In
the last hour the pain and throbbing (_percussio_) ceased entirely,
and the woman begged me to bleed her again from the hand, for she had
experienced great relief. I wished, however, to divert the material
to the lower extremities for two reasons, one of which I ought not to
mention in this place, while the other is useful, and indeed necessary
in such cases. You should know that this woman was suffering pain in
her left hand also, though this pain was of a less severe character
than in the right. For this reason I desired to divert the peccant
matter downward, a point which the physician should consider and
observe. Once, while treating a man suffering from sanguineous gout,
the pain of which involved the joints between the assuerus and the
racheta (?) of the right hand, I asked him whether any pain was felt
in the other hand or in the feet. He replied that similar pain was
felt in the left hand or its joints, and that hitherto it had been
more severe, but that no pain had ever been experienced in the feet.
Hence I was unwilling to bleed him at all from the left hand, but I
bled him from the right foot. A physician who had treated him before,
and had bled him from the right hand for acute swelling of the joints
of the left, quieted, indeed, the pain in the left hand, but diverted
the disease to the right, where a swelling developed larger than in
the left. And when I asked him about this, he understood that I knew
more about medicine than the other doctor did. And this is one of
the reasons why one ought to divert the material to another part,
especially when the pain is so located that it may be increased at
the beginning. For