Hippocrates, De morbis popularibus
W. H. S. Jones, Ed.

1 I take this, in apite of Galen, to mean " with extra long intervals between each breath." The phrase is rather care-less but scarcely tautological. " At intervals" or " after a long interval" are possible meanings, but inconsistent with διὰ τέλεος later on.

2 In many ways this case, though one of the most picturesque, is also one of the most carelessly written. Galen points out that διὰ Χπόνον is ambiguous, and that its possible meanings are inconsistent with the rest of the description. How can the respiration be ἀραιόν throughout, when on both the fourteenth and the twentieth days the patient was βραχύπνοος2 ? It is strange that the writer specifies the fourteenth day as the day when the respiration was rare and large, seeing that it had these characteristics throughout. A similar remark applies to ἀναις1θήτως εἰχε πάντων of the seventeenth day. Further, ἀεὶ ς1ιγῶς1α of the second sentence becomes strangely ἣ λόγοι χολλοὶ ἣ ς1ιγῶς1α διὰ τέλεος2 in the last. I conclude that this medical history was hastily written and never revised. A slight revision could easily have cleared away the inconsistencies, which are, as Galen seems to have seen, more apparent than real.