‘In Thasos, the wife of Delearces who lodged on the plain, through sorrow was seized with an acute and shivering fever. From first to last she always wrapped herself up in her bedclothes; kept silent, fumbled, picked, bored and gathered hairs [from the clothes]; tears, and again laughter; no sleep; bowels irritable, but passed nothing; when urged drank a little; urine thin and scanty; to the touch the fever was slight; coldness of the extremities. _Ninth day_, talked much incoherently, and again sank into silence. _Fourteenth day_, breathing rare, large, and spaced, and again hurried. _Seventeenth day_, after stimulation of the bowels she passed even drinks, nor could retain anything; totally insensible; skin parched and tense. _Twentieth day_, much talk, and again became composed, then voiceless; respiration hurried. _Twenty-first day_, died. Her respiration throughout was rare and large; she was totally insensible; always wrapped up in her bedclothes; throughout either much talk, or complete silence.’ This second case is in part a description of low muttering delirium, a common end of continued fevers such as, for instance, typhoid. The description closely resembles the condition known now in medicine as the ‘typhoid state’. Incidentally the case contains a reference to a type of breathing common among the dying. The respiration becomes deep and slow, as it sinks gradually into quietude and becomes rarer and rarer until it seems to cease altogether, and then it gradually becomes more rapid and so on alternately. This type of breathing is known to physicians as ‘Cheyne-Stokes’ respiration in commemoration of two distinguished Irish physicians of the last century who brought it to the attention of medical men.[119] Recently it has been partially explained on a physiological basis. We may note that there is another and even better pen-picture of Cheyne-Stokes respiration in the Hippocratic collection. It is in the famous case of ‘Philescos who lived by the wall and who took to his bed on the first day of acute fever’. About the middle of the sixth day he died and the physician notes that ‘the respiration throughout was _like that of a person recollecting himself_ and was large and rare’. Cheyne-Stokes breathing is admirably described as ‘that of a person recollecting himself’. [119] John Cheyne (1777-1836) described this type of respiration in the _Dublin Hospital Reports_, 1818, ii, p. 216. An extreme case of this condition had been described by Cheyne’s namesake George Cheyne (1671-1743) as the famous ‘Case of the Hon. Col. Townshend’ in his _English Malady_, London, 1733. William Stokes (1804-78) published his account of Cheyne-Stokes breathing in the _Dublin Quarterly Journal of the Medical Sciences_, 1846, ii, p. 73.