PART 14
The expectoration in all pains about the lungs and sides, should be
quickly and easily brought up, and a certain degree of yellowness
should appear strongly mixed up with the sputum.
[p. 51] But if brought up
long after the commencement of the pain, and of a yellow or ruddy
color, or if it occasions much cough, or be not strongly mixed, it
is worse; for that which is intensely yellow is dangerous, but the
white, and viscid, and round, do no good. But that which is very green
and frothy is bad; but if so intense as to appear black, it is still
more dangerous than these; it is bad,
if nothing is expectorated, and the lungs discharge nothing, but are
gorged with matters which boil (as it were) in the air-passages. It
is bad when coryza and sneezing either precede or follow affections
of the lungs, but in all other affections, even the most deadly, sneezing
is a salutary symptom. A yellow spittle mixed up with not much blood
in cases of pneumonia, is salutary and very beneficial if spit up
at the commencement of the disease, but if on the seventh day, or
still later, it is less favorable. And all sputa are bad which do
not remove the pain. But the worst is the black, as has been described.
Of all others the sputa which remove the pain are the best.