LH III 5, 56. To see the original French text, please go here. To see the original manuscript, please go here.
25 January 1676
Having come one morning to the home of Mons. the Abbey de Gravel, to go with him to St. Germain, he told me that he had just done a surgical operation on himself, against gout, by way of precaution. I asked him what it was. He said that his brother had learned in Germany that when one begins to be seized by gout, or to detect it, one must make incisions or scarifications at every new moon, as close to the true time of the new moon as possible, on the pad of the toe above where one begins to feel or to detect the affliction. His brother began to have two cases; some time ago he made use of [the operation]; the affliction has not returned. He has already felt there on occasion gout pains much more violent still than those his brother described. He made use of the same remedy, and the affliction has not returned since. There is nothing more reasonable than this. For it is the lowest and the final part of the body, where the heaviest and most viscous and tartarous humours accumulate little by little, and finally harden, or at least swell up that part. This is why one must give them air [vent]; this serves to move the blood from there, and to give them air [de l’air]. After the incision a ventouse must be applied. The style of ventouses used by the Germans, with their little points, is much more comfortable; as for me, I remember hearing the same thing in Germany as a certain remedy against gout, even when it has just been detected.
There is a sort of sickness in Paris of which the women habitually complain, and which they call ‘vapors’. These are a sort of vertigo, or surprises and sudden weaknesses that seize them and that disappear at once and come back intermittently. And as these blind them as if some thick cloud came and darkened their vision and their spirit, they call them ‘vapors’. But it is very clear that these could not be vapors. The comparison of the head to an alembic is very groundless; there are no passages for distillation and for there to be a vapor in the head itself there would have to be empty spaces where the vapor could accumulate. Now Mons. Alliot the younger told me that he and his father, along with Mons. Boundelot and others, witnessed the opening of the body of Mons. le Maréchal de Clerambault; they found there, in one of the passages of blood from the heart to the lungs, or the other way around (for I do not recall well), a large piece of spongy flesh like the tongue of a carp that had corked the passage of blood; for it is likely that the blood, in encountering these corks, is repulsed back upon itself, and in a sort of revulsion draws itself back bitterly from all of the extremities towards the heart. This must bring about a sudden weakening, but which ends all at once. It is a disposition for the syncope, when not enough blood can pass any longer as is required for life, one dies. In women, these obstructions cause disorders in the lower belly or the matrix, as if, [if] one had quickly corked an alembic in order to block the spirit that seeks to exit, everything would break apart. Now since the physicians base their diagnosis, ridiculously, on the name of ‘vapors’, it is necessary, they say, to condense them, so they prescribe lemonades6 and other acids, which prolong the affliction, since they having taken the piece that was found in Mons. de Clerambault and attempting to dissolve it in vinegar; but this only served to harden it. Afterwards, they dissolved it very thoroughly in an alkali that was like a detergent. Thus alkalis are necessary for dissolving it, and in order for them to penetrate into the blood, one needs very volatile and penetrating alkalis, like the spirit of urine or sal ammoniacum. Mons. Alliot the elder wrote a piece on cancer, treated (by alkalis) without fire or metal. Sylvius wrote a very honest letter to him, and
told him that they must have had the same teacher (Helmont, evidently) in order to have such similar views. Bartholin, in the catalogue of authors in the latest edition of his Anatomia reformata, also cites Pierre Alliot. The young Alliot defended a thesis: that Nature practices a vital Chemistry. Mons. Alliot the elder believed that the gall bladder, with the chyle, brings about effervescence in the thin intestine, before learning that Mons. Alliot teaches the same thing. It is the liquor of the gall bladder that maintains the fluidity and the movement of the blood by means of its alkali. And what is commonly attributed to the lack of natural heat in fact comes only from the lack of this liquor. Stones are produced in this bladder that diminish the quantity of gall. The reaction of bitter and acid bring about a third saline, which is this urinous salt. Wherefore it is necessary for the alkali to be derived by fermentation from the urine (it is apparent to me that bitter and acid yield a saline, particularly with respect to taste and size. But from the saline it is clear that these are not restored, but rather certain dissimilar things are obtained by putrefaction, other substances whose names have yet to be invented.). A surgeon or pharmacist named Lasson whom I met at the home of Mons. Alliot the younger, told me that by reasoning he found a way of distilling the spirit of urine in an instant, without fermentation, through the injection of certain things (alkalis that apparently consume the acid in order that it leave behind the volatile alkali of the urine) after having evaporated the urine to the consistency of honey. || Nothing better for cold pains than to stand straight for a long time, without inclining the head.
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