PART 19
XIX. Now the number of illnesses was great. And
of the patients there died chiefly striplings, young
people, people in their prime, the smooth, the fair-skinned,
the straight-haired, the black-haired, the
black-eyed, those who had lived recklessly and care-lessly,
the thin-voiced, the rough-voiced, the lispers,
the passionate. Women too died in very great
numbers who were of this kind. In this constitution
there were four symptoms especially which denoted
recovery :--a proper hemorrhage through the nostrils ;
copious discharges by the bladder of urine with
much sediment of a proper character ; disordered
bowels with bilious evacuations at the right time ;
the appearance of dysenteric characteristics. The
crisis in many cases did not come with one only
of the symptoms described above, but in most cases
all symptoms were experienced, and the patients
appeared to be more distressed ; but all with these
symptoms got well. Women and maidens experienced
all the above symptoms, but besides, whenever
any took place properly, and whenever copious menstruation
supervened, there was a crisis therefrom
which resulted in recovery ; in fact I know of no
woman who died when any of these symptoms took
place properly. For the daughter of Philo, who
died, though she had violent epistaxis, dined rather
unseasonably on the seventh day.
In acute fevers, more especially in ardent fevers,
when involuntary weeping occurs, epistaxis is to be
[p. 177]
expected it the patient have no fatal symptoms
besides ; for when he is in a bad way such weeping
portends not hemorrhage but death.
