[p. 29] the passage like males; for the urethra in
women opens direct into the pudendum, which is not the case with men,
neither in them is the urethra so wide, and they drink more than children
do. Thus, or nearly so, is it with regard to them.
PART 10
And respecting the seasons, one may judge whether the year will prove
sickly or healthy from the following observations: | Coray makes the following remarks on the natural characters of the seasons in Greece. The natural temperature of the winter in Greece was cold and humid; thus a dry and northerly winter was reckoned an unnatural season. Spring was reckoned unnatural when the heat and rain were excessive. |
- If the appearances
connected with the rising and setting stars be as they should be;
if there be rains in autumn; if the winter be mild, neither very tepid
nor unseasonably cold, and if in spring the rains be seasonable, and
so also in summer, the year is likely to prove healthy. But if the
winter be dry and northerly, and the spring showery and southerly,
the summer will necessarily be of a febrile character, and give rise
to ophthalmies and dysenteries. For when suffocating heat sets in
all of a sudden, while the earth is moistened by the vernal showers,
and by the south wind, the heat is necessarily doubled from the earth,
which is thus soaked by rain and heated by a burning sun, while, at
the same time, men's bellies are not in an orderly state, nor the
brain properly dried; for it is impossible, after such a spring, but
that the body and its flesh must be loaded with humors, so that very
acute fevers will attack all, but especially those of a phlegmatic
constitution. Dysenteries are also likely to occur to women and those
of a very humid temperament. And if at the rising of the Dogstar rain
and wintery storms supervene, and if the etesian winds blow, there
is reason to hope that these diseases will cease, and that the autumn
will be healthy; but if not, it is likely to be a fatal season to
children and women, but least of all to old men; and that convalescents
will pass into quartans, and from quartans into dropsies; but if the
winter be southerly, showery and mild, but the spring northerly, dry,
and of a wintry character, in the first place women who happen to
be with child, and whose accouchement should take place in spring,
are apt to miscarry; and such as bring forth, have feeble and sickly
children, so that they either die presently or are
|
