rous an error concerning the
Dog-dayes did first spring and arise, give me leave a little to goe on
with this my digression, for their better instruction, and satisfaction:
and I will briefly, and in a few lines shew the case, and the mistake
somewhat more plainly.

_Hippocrates_ in his fourth booke of Aphorismes, the fift, hath these
words: _Sub canicula, & ante caniculam difficiles sunt purgationes._
That is, under the canicular, or dog-star, and before the dog-star,
purgations are painfull and difficill. This is all that is there said of
them, or brought against them for that season, or time of the yeare. A
great stumbling-blocke against which many have dashed their feet, and
knockt their shinnes, and a fearfull scar-crow, whereat too many have
nicely boggled. Here you doe not find or see purging medicines to bee
then prohibited, or forbidden to be given at all (much lesse all other
physicke) but onely said to be difficill in their working: partly
because (as all expositors agree) nature is then somewhat enfeebled by
the great heat of the weather; partly because the humours being then, as
it were, accended are more chaffed by the heat of the purging medicines;
partly, and lastly, because two contrary motions seeme then to be at one
and the same time, which may offend nature; as the great heat of the
weather leading the humours of the body outwardly to the circumference
thereof, and the medicine drawing them inwardly to the center. All which
circumstances in our cold region are little, or nothing at all (as
formerly hath beene mentioned) to be regarded. For as _Jacobus
Hollerius_, a French Physitian, much honoured for his great learning and
judgement, hath very well observed in his Comment upon this Aphorisme;
_Hippocrates_ speaketh here onely of those purging medicines, which are
strong, and vehement, or hot and fiery; and that this precept is to take
place in most hot Regions, but not in these cold Countries, as _France_,
_England_, and the like.

Over and beside all this, those churlish hot purging medicines, which
were then in frequent use in _Hippocrates_ his time, and some hundred of
yeares after, are now for most part obsolete, and quite growne out of
use, seldom brought in practice by Physitians in these dayes; because we
have within these last six hundred yeares great choice and variety of
more mild, benigne, and gentle purgatives found out by the Arabian
Physitians, which were altogether unknowne unto the a