FIRST CONSTITUTION
PART 1
I. IN Thasos during autumn, about the time of
the equinox to near the setting of the Pleiades,
1
there were many rains, gently continuous, with
southerly winds. Winter southerly,
2 north winds
light, droughts ; on the whole, the winter was
like a spring. Spring southerly and chilly ; slight
showers. Summer in general cloudy. No rain.
Etesian winds few, light and irregular.
The whole weather proved southerly, with droughts,
but early in the spring, as the previous constitution
had proved the opposite and northerly, a few patients
suffered from ardent fevers, and these very mild,
causing hemorrhage in few cases and no deaths.
Many had swellings beside one ear, or both ears, in
most cases unattended with fever,
3 so that confinement
to bed was unnecessary. In some cases there was
slight heat, but in all the swellings subsided without
causing harm ; in no case was there suppuration
such as attends swellings of other origin. This was
the character of them :--flabby, big, spreading, with
neither inflammation nor pain ; in every case they
[p. 149]
disappeared without a sign.
4 The sufferers were
youths, young men, and men in their prime, usually
those who frequented the wrestling school and
gymnasia. Few women were attacked. Many had
dry coughs which brought up nothing when they
coughed, but their voices were hoarse. Soon after,
though in some cases after some time, painful
inflammations occurred either in one testicle or in
both, sometimes accompanied with fever, in other
cases not. Usually they caused much suffering. In
other respects the people had no ailments requiring
medical assistance.
5
PART 2
II. Beginning early in the summer, throughout
the summer and in winter many of those who had
been ailing a long time took to their beds in a state
of consumption, while many also who had hitherto
been doubtful sufferers at this time showed undoubted
symptoms. Some showed the symptoms now for
the first time ; these were those whose constitution
inclined to be consumptive. Many, in fact most of
these, died ; of those who took to their beds I do not
know one who survived even for a short time. Death
came more promptly than is usual in consumption,
and yet the other complaints, which will be described
presently, though longer and attended with fever,
were easily supported and did not prove fatal. For
consumption was the worst of the diseases that
occurred, and alone was responsible for the great
mortality.
In the majority of cases the symptoms were these.
Fever with shivering, continuous, acute, not completely
intermitting, but of the semitertian type ;
remitting during one day they were exacerbated on
the next, becoming on the whole more acute. Sweats
[p. 151]
were continual, but not all over the body. Severe
chill in the extremities, which with difficulty
recovered their warmth. Bowels disordered, with
bilious, scanty, unmixed, thin, smarting stools,
causing the patient to get up often. Urine either
thin, colourless,
6 unconcocted
and scanty, or thick
and with a slight deposit, not settling favourably,
but with a crude and unfavourable deposit. The
patients frequently coughed up small, concocted
sputa, brought up little by little with difficulty.
Those exhibiting the symptoms in their most
violent form showed no concoction at all, but
continued spitting crude sputa. In the majority
of these cases the throat was throughout painful
from the beginning, being red and inflamed. Fluxes
slight, thin, pungent. Patients quickly wasted away
and grew worse, being throughout averse to all food
and experiencing no thirst. Delirium in many cases
as death approached. Such were the symptoms of
the consumption.
PART 3
III. But when summer came, and during autumn
occurred many continuous but not violent fevers, which
attacked persons who were long ailing without
suffering distress in any other particular manner ; for
the bowels were in most cases quite easy, and hurt
to no appreciable extent. Urine in most cases of
good colour and clear, but thin, and after a time near
the crisis it grew concocted. Coughing was slight,
and caused no distress. No lack of appetite ; in fact
it was quite possible even to give food. In general
the patients did not sicken, as did the consumptives,
[p. 153]
with shivering fevers, but with slight sweats, the
paroxysms being variable and irregular.
7 The earliest
crisis was about the twentieth day ; in most cases
the crisis was about the fortieth day, though in
many it was about the eightieth. In some cases
the illness did not end in this way, but in an
irregular manner without a crisis. In the majority
of these cases the fevers relapsed after a brief
interval, and after the relapse a crisis occurred at
the end of the same periods as before. The disease
in many of these instances was so protracted that
it even lasted during the winter.
Out of all those described in this constitution
only the consumptives showed a high mortality-rate ;
for all the other patients bore up well, and the
other fevers did not prove fatal.
