Of Medicine, in Eight BooksCelsus, Aulus Cornelius
History
Of Medicine, in Eight Books
Celsus, Aulus Cornelius
Medicine, Greek and Roman
A suppuration is produced many ways(10); for if fevers unattended
with pain continue long without any manifest cause, the disorder
is transferred upon some particular part: but this happens only in
younger people; for in the elderly, a quartan ague is the common
consequence of such a disease. A suppuration also happens, if the
præcordia being hard and pained have neither carried off the patient
before the twentieth day, nor an hæmorrhage from the nose has ensued;
and this holds chiefly in youths, especially if in the beginning of
the distemper they had dimness of the eyes, or pains of the head: but
then the abscess forms in the lower parts _of the body_. But if there
be a soft tumour in the præcordia, and it has not ceased within sixty
days, and the fever continues all that time, then the abscess forms
in the superior parts: and if there is not a discharge of blood from
the nose(11) in the beginning, it breaks out about the ears. And as
every tumour of long standing generally tends to suppuration, so one,
that is seated in the præcordia is more likely to have that issue, than
one that is in the belly: and one, that is above the navel, than one,
that is below it. Also if there is a sense of lassitude in a fever, an
abscess is formed either in the jaws, or the joints. Sometimes too the
urine continues long and thin, and crude, and the other symptoms are
good: in this case for the most part an abscess is formed below the
transverse septum (which the Greeks call diaphragma). If a peripneumony
is removed neither by expectoration, nor by cupping, nor bleeding, nor
a proper regimen, it sometimes gives rise to some vomicæ, either about
the twentieth day, or thirtieth, or fortieth, and even sometimes about
the sixtieth. Now we must date our reckoning from that day, in which
the person was first taken with the fever, or seized with a horror, or
felt a weight in the part. But these vomicæ are generated sometimes in
the lungs, sometimes about the ribs. Where the suppuration is seated,
it raises a pain and inflammation, and there is a greater heat there:
and if one has lain down upon the sound side, he imagines it loaded
with some weight. And every suppuration, that is not yet visible, may
be known by the following signs: the fever does not wholly intermit,
but is more mild in the day-time, and increases at night, there is
plentiful sweating, an inclination to cough, and hardly any thing
brought up by it, the eyes are hollow, cheeks red, the veins under the
tongue white, the nails of the hands crooked, the fingers, especially
their extremities, hot; there are swellings in the feet, difficulty
in breathing, loathing of food, pimples breaking out over the whole
body. But if the pain, cough, and difficulty of breathing have come on
immediately at the beginning, the vomica will break before, or about
the twentieth day. If these have begun later, they must of course
increase; but the less quickly they have appeared, the more slowly will
they be removed.
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