Hippocrates Collected Works I

Hippocrates Collected Works I
By Hippocrates
Edited by: W. H. S. Jones (trans.)

Cambridge Harvard University Press 1868

Digital Hippocrates Collection Table of Contents

PREFACE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
   1. Greek Medicine and Hippocrates
   2. The Hippocratic Collection
   3. Means of Dating Hippocratic Works
   4. Plato's References to Hippocrates
   5. THE COMMENTATORS AND OTHER ANCIENT AUTHORITIES.
   Galen
   6. LIFE OF HIPPOCRATES.
   7. THE ASCLEPIADAE.
   8. THE DOCTRINE OF HUMOURS.
   9. CHIEF DISEASES MENTIONED IN THE HIPPOCRATIC COLLECTION.
   10. πολύς AND ὀλίγος IN THE PLURAL.
   11. THE IONIC DIALECT OF THE HIPPOCRATIC COLLECTION.
   12. MANUSCRIPTS.

ANCIENT MEDICINE
   INTRODUCTION
   ANCIENT MEDICINE
   APPENDIX

AIRS WATERS PLACES
   INTRODUCTION
   MSS. AND EDITIONS.
   AIRS WATERS PLACES

EPIDEMICS I AND III
   INTRODUCTION
   EPIDEMICS I
   EPIDEMICS III: THE CHARACTERS
   EPIDEMICS III
   SIXTEEN CASES

THE OATH
Introduction
OATH

PRECEPTS
INTRODUCTION
PRECEPTS

NUTRIMENT
INTRODUCTION
NUTRIMENT

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GENERAL INTRODUCTION

8. THE DOCTRINE OF HUMOURS.

[p. liv]

Critical Days

Crises took place on what were called critical days. It is a commonplace that a disease tends to reach a crisis on a fixed day from the commencement, although the day is not absolutely fixed, nor is it the same for all diseases. The writer of Prognostic and Epidemics I. lays it down as a general law that acute diseases have crises on one or more fixed days in a series.

In Prognostic Chapter XX the series for fevers is given thus:--4th day, 7th, 11th, 14th, 17th, 20th, 34th, 40th, 60th.

In Epidemics I. XXVI. two series are given:--

(a) diseases which have exacerbations on even days have crises on these even days: 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th, 14th, 20th, 24th, 30th, 40th, 60th, 80th, 120th.

(b) diseases which have exacerbations on odd days have crises on these odd days: 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th, 17th, 21st, 27th, 31st.

A crisis on any other than a normal day was supposed to indicate a probably fatal relapse.

Galen thought that Hippocrates was the first to discuss the critical days, and there is no evidence against this view, though it seems more likely that it gradually grew up in the Coan school.
On the other hand, critical days are not discussed at all in Coan Prenotions, the supposed repository of pre-Hippocratic Coan medicine.

What was the origin of this doctrine? Possibly it may in part be a survival of Pythagorean magic, numbers being supposed to have mystical powers, which affected medicine through the Sicilian-Italian