[p. 59] specially described.

Our author here and elsewhere impresses it upon his readers that it is from the tout ensemble of the symptoms that a judgment is to be formed in every case. This is evidently a remark of the most vital importance in forming a prognosis.

These things I say respecting acute diseases, and the affections which spring from them.

PART 25

He who would correctly beforehand those that will recover, and those that will die, and in what cases the disease will be protracted for many days, and in what cases for a shorter time, must be able to form a judgment from having made himself acquainted with all the symptoms, and estimating their powers in comparison with one another, as has been described, with regard to the others, and the urine and sputa, as when the patient coughs up pus and bile together. One ought also to consider promptly the influx of epidemical diseases and the constitution of the season. One should likewise be well acquainted with the particular signs and the other symptoms, and not be ignorant how that, in every year, and at every season, bad symptoms prognosticate ill, and favorable symptoms good, since the aforesaid symptoms appear to have held true in Libya, in Delos, and in Scythia,

It has excited a great deal of discussion and difference of opinion to determine what our author means by specifying these three places; but the explanation given by Galen in his Commentary seems to me quite satisfactory. According to him, the meaning of our author is that good and bad symptoms tell the same in all places, in the hot regions of Libya, the cold of Scythia, and the temperate of Delos. It is further to be borne in mind that Odessus in Scythia, and Cyrene in Libya, were the extremities of the Grecian world, whilst Delos may be regarded as its centre. It is proper to remark, however, that by the three places mentioned, Erotian understands the three quarters of the earth-Africa, Asia, and Europe.

from which it may be known that, in the same regions, there is no difficulty in attaining a knowledge of many more things than these; if having learned them, one knows also how to judge and reason correctly of them. But you should not complain because the name of any disease may happen not to be described here, for you may know all such as come to a crisis in the aforementioned times, by the same symptoms.

The meaning of this last sentence has been supposed to be somewhat ambiguous; but to me it appears evidently to be this, that the rules of prognosis, as laid down above, apply to all diseases of an acute character, whether their names happen to be mentioned in the course of this work or not, so that it should not be considered a defect in the work that any one is omitted.