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Nevertheless, if a person examine more curiously into these different species (which is not here the province of a physician) he will easily understand that the effects of them all proceed from one cause; that is, the carrying off of something. For a part will be bound, when that thing is taken away, the intervention of which had caused it to be lax; and another is softened by removing that, which occasioned the hardness; and the body is filled, not by the friction itself, but by that food, which afterwards makes its way to the skin, relaxed by a kind of digestion(26). And the degree of it is the cause of these effects so widely different.

But there is a great deal of difference betwixt unction, and friction. For it is necessary for the body to be anointed, and gently rubbed even in acute and recent distempers; but this must be done in the time of their remission, and before taking food. But to make use of long friction is not proper, either in acute or increasing disorders; except when the intention of it is to procure sleep in phrenitic patients. This remedy is very agreeable to inveterate distempers, and where they have abated somewhat of their first violence. I am not ignorant that some maintain, that every remedy is necessary for distempers, while they are increasing, not when they are going off spontaneously. But this is not just; for a distemper, though it would come to a period of itself, may notwithstanding be sooner terminated by the application of remedies. The use of which is necessary upon a double account, both that the health may be restored as soon as possible; and that the disorder, which remains, be not irritated again by any slight cause: for a distemper may be less violent, than it has been, and yet not entirely removed; but there may be some remains of it, which the use of remedies may dissipate.