[p. 21]tion; then many are unfruitful
from disease, and not from nature, and they have frequent miscarriages;
infants are subject to attacks of convulsions and asthma, which they
consider to be connected with infancy, and hold to be a sacred disease
(epilepsy). The men are subject to attacks of dysentery, diarrhea,
hepialus,| The Hepialus is a species of intermittent fever, very common in warm climates. It would appear to be a variety of the quotidian. See PAULUS AEGINETA, Vol. I., 252, Syd. Soc. edition. |
chronic fevers in winter, of epinyctis,| Frequent mention of this disease of the skin occurs in the works of the ancient writers on medicine. |
frequently, and
of hemorrhoids about the anus. Pleurisies, peripneumonies, ardent
fevers, and whatever diseases are reckoned acute, do not often occur,
for such diseases are not apt to prevail where the bowels are loose.
Ophthalmies occur of a humid character, but not of a serious nature,
and of short duration, unless they attack epidemically from the change
of the seasons. And when they pass their fiftieth year, defluxions
supervening from the brain, render them paralytic when exposed suddenly
to strokes of the sun, or to cold. These diseases are endemic to them,
and, moreover, if any epidemic disease connected with the change of
the seasons, prevail, they are also liable to it.
PART 4
But the following is the condition of cities which have the opposite
exposure, namely, to cold winds, between the summer settings and the
summer risings of the sun, and to which these winds are peculiar,
and which are sheltered from the south and the hot breezes. In the
first place the waters are, for the most part, hard cold. The men
must necessarily be well braced and slender, and they must have the
discharges downwards of the alimentary canal hard, and of difficult
evacuation, while those upwards are more fluid, and rather bilious
than pituitous. Their heads are sound and hard, and they are liable
to burstings (of vessels?) for the most part. The diseases which prevail
epidemically with them, are pleurisies, and those which are called
acute diseases. This must be the case when the bowels are bound; and
from any causes, many become affected with suppurations in the lungs,
the cause of which is the tension of the body, and hardness of the
bowels; for their dryness and the
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