Ptisis is a substantial consumption of the humidity of the body, due to ulceration of the lungs. For when a solution of continuity occurs in the lungs, the inspiratory and expiratory forces fail. Hence the lungs do not inspire sufficient air to mitigate the innate heat of the heart, and the heart fails to purify itself of the fumosity or fumous vapors generated in itself. Accordingly, deprived of the means of mitigating its heat or ventilating its fumosities, the spirits within it become unduly heated, and a consuming fire is generated in the entire body. The symptoms of ptisis are a continued fever, greater or less, detected in the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet, thirst, a roughness of the tongue, slenderness of the neck, wasting of the entire body, constipation, wasting and shrinking of the finger-nails and fingers, hollowness of the eyes, pain in the left scapula extending to the shoulder, pharyngeal catarrh with abundant and mucilaginous sputum and a tendency to lachrymation. If the sputum thrown upon the coals emits a fetid odor, it is a sign of confirmed ptisis, which is incurable. The disease when it occurs in youths and young persons rarely lasts longer than a year, often terminates in less time, and may sometimes, by the aid of medicine, be prolonged for a greater period. If the sputum received during the night in a vessel is flushed in the morning with warm water, while some impurities remain upon the surface, the putrid matter will sink to the bottom (_sputum fundum petens_), and the indications are fatal. Likewise sharpness of the nose, hollow eyes, slender nails, falling hair, flattened temples and diarrhoea are of evil omen. These patients converse while dying, and die conversing (_moriendo loquentur, sed loquendo moriuntur_). Gilbert, of course, supplies a formidable array of remedies for the disease, but tells us that the "very latest" is cauterization over the clavicles (_Novissimum autem consilium est cauterium in furcula pectoris_). The varieties of difficulty of breathing are classified under the titles of asma, dispnea, orthomia, hanelitus and sansugium. The last title is given to a condition in which, as Gilbert says, "A superfluous humor is abundant in the superficies of the lung, which compresses that organ and renders it unable to dilate in inspiration. Hence it labors in inspiration like a leech, from which the dyspnea derives its name." Under the single title of "_cardiaca passio_" are included all possible diseases of the heart. The symptoms of this disease are said to be "palpitation, twitching of the limbs (_saltus membrorum_), perspiration, weakness of the nerves, facial pallor, weakness of the body as in hectic fever or phthisis, excessive pain and faintness over the precordia, a disposition to sleep and often constipation." The treatment is, of course, entirely symptomatic.