This electronic edition is funded by the National Library of Medicine History of Medicine Division. This text has been proofread to a high degree of accuracy. It was converted to electronic form using Data Entry. (Medical Information Disclaimer:
It is not the intention of NLM to provide specific medical advice but rather to provide users with information to better understand their health and their diagnosed disorders. Specific medical advice will not be provided, and NLM urges you to consult with a qualified physician for diagnosis and for answers to your personal questions.)
OF ARETÆUS, THE CAPPADOCIAN, ON THE CAUSES AND SYMPTOMS OF ACUTE DISEASE
BOOK II.
[p. 277]
rare and small, but before death very small, very dense, and
failing. These symptoms attend the disease in the small
intestines.
But the same affections occur also in the colon, and the
symptoms are similar, as also the issue; some of these escape
if pus form in the colon, the reason of which is the fleshy
thickness of this intestine. The pain is slender and sharp
in the small intestines, but broad and heavy in the colon;
the pain also sometimes darts up to the ribs, when the disease
puts on the appearance of pleurisy; and these, moreover, are
affected with fever; but sometimes it extends to the false
ribs, on this side or on that, so that the pain appears to be
seated in the liver and spleen; again it affects the loins, for
the colon has many convolutions in all directions; but in
other cases it fixes on the sacrum, the thighs, and the cremasters
of the testicles. But in colic affections, they have
rather retchings; and what is vomited is then bilious and
oily. And the danger therefrom is so much the less, as the
colon is more fleshy, and thicker than the small intestines,
and consequently more tolerant of injury.
CHAPTER VII. ON THE ACUTE AFFECTIONS ABOUT THE LIVER
IN the affections of the liver, the patients do not die, indeed,
more quickly than in those of the heart; but yet they suffer
more pain; for the liver is, in a great measure, a concretion of
blood. But if the cause of death happen to be situated in its
Portæ, they die no less speedily than from the heart; for these
parts are tissues formed of membranes, of important and
slender nerves, and of large veins. Hence certain of the philosophers
