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PART 17

XVII. An opponent may retort, "But patients whose fever comes from ardent fevers,1 pneumonia, or other virulent disease, do not quickly get rid of their feverishness, and in these cases the heat and cold no longer alternate." Now I consider that herein lies my strongest evidence that men are not feverish merely through heat, and that it could not be the sole cause of the harm ; the truth being that one and the same thing is both bitter and hot, or acid and

[p. 47] hot, or salt and hot, with numerous other combinations, and cold again combines with other powers.2 It is these things which cause the harm. Heat, too, is present, but merely as a concomitant, having the strength of the directing factor which is aggravated and increases with the other factor, but having no power3 greater than that which properly belongs to it.

1 καῦς1ος2 was almost certainly a form of remittent malaria. See my Malaria and Greek Histς1ry (index).

2 Or "properties."

3 Or "effect."

Hippocrates Collected Works I. Hippocrates. W. H. S. Jones. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1868.

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