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PART 24

XXIV. Some fevers are continuous, some have an access during the day and an intermission during the night, or an access during the night and an intermission during the day ; there are semitertians,

[p. 183] tertians, quartans, quintans, septans, nonans. The most acute diseases, the most severe, difficult and fatal, belong to the continuous fevers. The least fatal and least difficult of all, but the longest of all, is the quartan. Not only is it such in itself, but it also ends other, and serious, diseases. In the fever called semitertian, which is more fatal than any other, there occur also acute diseases, while it especially precedes the illness of consumptives, and of those who suffer from other and longer diseases. The nocturnal is not very fatal, but it is long. The diurnal is longer still, and to some it also brings a tendency to consumption. The septan is long but not fatal. The nonan is longer still but not fatal. The exact tertian has a speedy crisis and is not fatal. But the quintan is the worst of all. For if it comes on before consumption or during consumption the patient dies.

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

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