black-bile

Updated: July 19, 2026

Abscess of the liver depends upon some vice of the blood, the bile, the phlegm or the black-bile. The general treatment is poultices and other maturatives, but, as the author adds rather sadly at the close, ultima cura est per incisionem. Dropsy is discussed as an independent disease through the exhaustive speculations of thirty-two pages.

Henry E. (Henry Ebenezer) Handerson - Gilbertus Anglicus: Medicine of the Thirteenth Century

The spleen, Gilbert says, is sometimes the name of an organ, sometimes of a disease. As an organ it is spongy and loose in texture, and attracts and retains the superfluities of the black-bile, expelled from the liver for its own cleansing.

Henry E. (Henry Ebenezer) Handerson - Gilbertus Anglicus: Medicine of the Thirteenth Century