[p. 106]fevers were mild afterwards. But, with
regard to the strangury itself, the symptoms were protracted and painful.
Their urine was copious, thick, of various characters, red, mixed
with pus, and was passed with pain. These all recovered, and I did
not see a single instance of death among them.
PART 5
With regard to the dangers of these cases, one must always attend
to the seasonable concoction of all the evacuations, and to the favorable
and critical abscesses. The concoctions indicate a speedy crisis and
recovery of health; crude and undigested evacuations, and those which
are converted into bad abscesses, indicate either want of crisis,
or pains, or prolongation of the disease, or death, or relapses; which
of these it is to be must be determined from other circumstances.
The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present,
and foretell the future- must mediate these things, and have two special
objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do
no harm. The art consists in three things- the disease, the patient,
and the physician. The physician is the servant of the art, and the
patient must combat the disease along with the physician. |
I need scarcely remark that this passage is of classical celebrity. Galen, in his Commentary, remarks that the first time he read it he thought it unworthy of Hippocrates to lay it down as a rule of practice, that "the physician should do good to his patient, or at least no harm;" but that, after having seen a good deal of the practice of other physicians, and observed how often they were justly exposed to censure for having bled, or applied the bath, or given medicines, or wine unseaonably, he came to recognize the propriety and importance of the rule laid down by Hippocrates. The practice of certain physicians, Galen remarks, is like playing at the dice, when what turns up may occasion the greatest mischief to their patients. The last clause of this passage is very forcibly put. Galen, however, informs us that in some of th MSS. instead of "art" he found "nature"; that is to say, that the physician is "the minister (or servant) of nature." Either of the readings, he remarks, will agree very well with the meaning of the passage. |
PART 6
Pains about the head and neck, and heaviness of the same along
with pain, occur either without fevers or in fevers. Convulsions occurring
in persons attacked with frenzy, and having vomitings of verdigris-green
bile, in some cases quickly prove fatal. In ardent fevers, and in
those other fevers in which there is pain of the neck, heaviness of
the temples, mistiness about the eyes, and distention about the hypochondriac
region, not unattended with pain, hemorrhage from the nose takes place,
but
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