As to the different ages, children, and those a little more advanced, have their health best in the spring, and are most safe in the beginning of summer; old men in the summer, and beginning of autumn; young and middle aged men in the winter. The winter is more hurtful to old men, and the summer to youths. For the peculiar weaknesses, that appear at different times of life, first of all infants and young children will be troubled with spreading ulcers of the mouth, which the Greeks call aphthæ[AP], vomitings, nightly watching, humour in the ears, and inflammations about the navel. The peculiar complaints of such as are teething, are exulcerations in the gums, convulsions, slight fevers, purgings, and these are chiefly troublesome about the cutting of the canine teeth. Infants of the fullest habit, and whose bellies are very much bound, are most liable to these dangers. But when they have grown up a little, there appear disorders of the glands, and different inclinations of the vertebræ, which compose the spine, scrophulous swellings, some painful kinds of warts, by the Greeks called acrochordones[AQ], and many other tubercles. In the beginning of puberty, many of the above-named, and long fevers, and hæmorrhages from the nose. And generally all children are most in danger first about the fortieth day, then the seventh month, then the seventh year, after these at the time of puberty. Moreover any distempers, which commence in infancy, and are terminated neither by puberty, nor in men by their first commerce with women, nor in women by the appearance of their menses, commonly continue long: yet more frequently these puerile disorders of long standing are removed by these means. Youth is most subject to acute disorders, and epileptic, and to a consumption: and they are commonly young men, who spit blood. After this age, come on pleurisies and peripneumonies, lethargy, cholera, madness, and discharges of blood from certain mouths, as it were, of the veins, by the Greeks called hæmorrhoides[AR]. In old age, difficulty of breathing, and making urine, gravedo, pains of the joints and kidneys, palsies, bad habit of body, which the Greeks call cachexia[AS], nightly watchings, tedious disorders of the ears, of the eyes, and nose, and especially a loose belly, and its consequences a dysentery, or lientery, and other indispositions incident to that habit. Besides these the slender are distressed with consumptions, purgings, catarrhs, and pains of the bowels, and sides. The corpulent generally are oppressed with acute diseases, and difficulty of breathing, and often die suddenly, which seldom happens in a more slender body. [AP] ἄφθαι. [AQ] ἀκροχορδ́ονες. [AR] αἱμοῤῥοίδες. [AS] καχεξία. CHAP. II. OF THE SIGNS OF AN APPROACHING ILLNESS.