COMMENTARY. Our author has copied from Oribasius (Synops. vi, 21), who in his turn is indebted to Galen (de Diff. Feb. i, 11.) A similar account is given in somewhat fuller terms by Aëtius (v, 92.) See also Alexander (xii, 4.) We shall merely give his explanation of the characters of the pulse. It is hard and small, because the vessels have become dry and contracted; it is dense (frequent?) because the necessities of the system require it to be so, (namely, in order to make up for the reduced expansion of the artery); it is feeble, owing to the weakness of the vital powers; and slender, because the vessel does not admit of being stretched in breadth. Nonnus and Actuarius derive their views from Galen. According to the latter, hectic fever is a very dangerous disease when it arises from the conversion of any other fever, but when connected with inflammation or scirrhus of any vital organ it is almost incurable. Palladius says that the hectic is an unceasing fever, wasting and consuming the natural humidity of all the members, and supervening for the most part upon acute and ardent fevers, but sometimes arising from sympathy with some vital organ. He states it as a characteristic of the hectic fever, that food increases the febrile heat, in like manner as water poured upon unslacked lime enkindles heat. This comparison is borrowed from Galen, and is repeated also by Alexander and Nonnus. Palladius, like our author, represents marasmus as the termination of the hectic fever. It is distinguished, he says, by prostration of the natural faculties, aridity, and wasting of the body, which becomes dried and parched like a tree deprived of its juices by exposure to excessive heat.