On Hemorrhoids

Part 1

The disease of the hemorrhoids is formed in this way: if bile or phlegm be determined to the veins in the rectum, it heats the blood in the veins; and these veins becoming heated attract blood from the nearest veins, and being gorged the inside of the gut swells outwardly, and the heads of the veins are raised up, and being at the same time bruised by the faeces passing out, and injured by the blood collected in them, they squirt out blood, most frequently along with the faeces, but sometimes without faeces. It is to be cured thus:

Part 2

In the first place it should be known in what sort of a place they are formed. For cutting, excising, sewing, binding, applying putrefacient means to the anus,-all these appear to be very formidable things, and yet, after all, they are not attended with mischief. I recommend seven or eight small pieces of iron to be prepared, a fathom in size, in thickness like a thick specillum, and bent at the extremity, and a broad piece should be on the extremity, like a small obolus

I would direct the attention of my surgical readers to the form of the ancient cautery orburning iron; it resembles a small coin, that is to say, it was a disk. I have often thought that modern practitioners in surgery erred in making their cauteries globular, instead of making them flat disks like the ancient.

. Having on the preceding day first purged the man with medicine, on the day of the operation apply the cautery. Having laid him on his back, and placed a pillow below the breech, force out the anus as much as possible with the fingers, and make the irons red-hot, and burn the pile until it be dried up, and so as that no part may be left behind. And burn so as to leave none of the hemorrhoids unburnt, for