The Genuine Works of Hippocrates Volume 1

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1849 edition. Excerpt: ...He therefore suggests the question whether there may not he a lacuna in the text. The description of the respiration preceding dissolution in the Prae-notioncs is certainly most graphie, and it appears wonderful that it should be omitted by Hippocrates in the Prognostics. ' The paragraph on sweats is founded on the Coacae Praenotiones, 572, 573; but the Prognostics is much fuller than the other. The cold sweats described in this paragraph were called syncoptic by the ancients, and were supposed to be connected with atony of the pores of the skin. See Galen, h. l., and De Causis Sympt., iii, 9. Stephanus, with rather too much logical parade, gives a good many acute and interesting remarks on this passage. He says that cold sweats are connected with a complete prostration of the innate heat (calidum innatum). (p. 114.) 3 The characters of the hypochondriac region are copied in part from the CoactE Pranotiones, 279, 280, 282; but they are much improved in the Prognostics. It will be remarked that in the Epidemics great attention is paid to the state of the bypochondria. Stephanas remarks that pulsation or palpitation in the bypochondria is caused by violent throbbing of the aorta as it passes through this region, which is occasioned by the effervescence and inflammation of the important parts which are situated in it, and with which the brain is apt to sympathise. (p. 118.) Meteorism of the hypochondriac region is often mentioned in the reports of the cases described in the Epidemics. i The anthor evidently alludes to hepatitis ending in abscess. This would seem to have been a very common termination of inflammation of the liver in Greece, as it is often described in the ancient medical works. See Pahlus /egineta, B. III, 46, and the...