PART 10
X. This, or something very like this, is the truth
concerning these matters. As to the seasons, a
consideration of the following points will make it
possible to decide whether the year will prove
unhealthy or healthy. If the signs prove normal
when the stars set and rise ; if there be rains in
autumn, if the winter be moderate, neither too mild
nor unseasonably cold, and if the rains be seasonable
in spring and in summer, the year is likely to be
very healthy. If, on the other hand, the winter
prove dry and northerly, the spring rainy and
southerly, the summer cannot fail to be feverladen,
causing ophthalmia and dysenteries. For
whenever the great heat comes on suddenly while
the earth is soaked by reason of the spring rains
and the south wind, the heat cannot fail to be
doubled, coming from the hot, sodden earth and
the burning sun ; men's bowels not being braced
nor their brain dried--for when spring is such
the body and its flesh must necessarily be flabby--the
fevers that attack are of the acutest type in
all cases, especially among the phlegmatic. Dysenteries
are also likely to come upon women and
the most humid constitutions. If at the rising
of the Dog Star stormy rain occurs and the
Etesian winds blow, there is hope that the distempers
will cease and that the autumn will be
healthy. Otherwise there is danger lest deaths
[p. 101]
occur among the women and children, and least
of all among the old men ; and lest those that get
better lapse into quartans, and from quartans into
dropsies. But if the winter be southerly, rainy and
mild, and the spring be northerly, dry and wintry,
in the first place women with child whose delivery
is due by spring suffer abortion ; and if they do
bring forth, their children are weak and sickly,
so that either they die at once, or live puny, weak
and sickly. Such is the fate of the women. The
others have dysenteries and dry ophthalmia, and
in some cases catarrhs descend from the head to
the lungs. Phlegmatics are liable to dysenteries,
and women also, phlegm running down from the
brain because of the humidity of their constitution.
The bilious have dry ophthalmia because of the
warm dryness of their flesh. Old men have catarrhs
because of their flabbiness and the wasting of their
veins, so that some die suddenly, while others
become paralyzed on the right side or the left. For
whenever, owing to the winter being southerly
and the body warm, neither brain nor veins are
hardened, a northerly, dry, cold spring supervening,
the brain, just at the time when it ought to have been
relaxed along with spring and purged by cold in the
head and hoarseness, congeals and hardens, so that
the heat of summer having suddenly supervened and
the change supervening, these diseases befall. Such
[p. 103]
cities as are well situated with regard to sun and
winds, and use good waters, are less affected by such
changes ; but if they use marshy or standing waters,
and are not well situated with regard to winds and
sun, they are more affected. If the summer prove
dry, the diseases cease more quickly ; if it be rainy,
they are protracted. Sores are apt to fester from the
slightest cause. Lienteries and dropsies supervene
on the conclusion of the diseases, as the bowels do
not readily dry up. If the summer and the autumn
be rainy and southerly, the winter must be unhealthy ;
phlegmatics and men over forty are likely
to suffer from ardent fevers, bilious people from
pleurisy and pneumonia. If the summer prove dry
and northerly, and the autumn rainy and southerly,
it is likely that in winter headaches occur and
mortifications of the brain,
1 and in
addition hoarseness,
colds in the head, coughs, and in some cases consumption
as well. But if the weather be northerly
and dry, with no rain either during the Dog Star or
at Arcturus, it is very beneficial to those who have
a phlegmatic or humid constitution, and to women,
but it is very harmful to the bilious. For these dry
up overmuch, and are attacked by dry ophthalmia
and by acute, protracted fevers, in some cases too
by melancholies. For the most humid and watery
part of the bile is dried up and is spent, while the
[p. 105]
thickest and most acrid part is left, and similarly
with the blood. Consequently these diseases come
upon them. But all these conditions are helpful to
the phlegmatic, for they dry up and reach winter
dried up and not flabby.
