Laypeople perfectly understood the need to expel corrupted matter from their bodies when they fell ill, something that is revealed in the countless number of references to the evacuant therapies in contemporary writings.    From Wordnik.com.  [Pestilence and Headcolds: Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico] Reference

At least one letter writer saw firsthand the perils of an overly aggressive treatment: "they bleed her six times and because of this she was put in great danger," Juan de Briguega writes about his wife, who, at the time, was seven months pregnant. 66 Although most of the evacuant treatments were probably harmless, the potential hazards of subjecting a patient to excessive bleeding or purging were real because dehydration and serious blood loss could be fatal.    From Wordnik.com.  [Pestilence and Headcolds: Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico] Reference

“dribbling,” and by a considerable amount of relaxation of the bowels-a condition that must not be mistaken for diarrhoea, and checked as if a disease, but rather, for the day or two it continues, encouraged as a critical evacuant.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Book of Household Management] Reference