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Commentary: A few comments have been posted about Aphorisms.
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Table of Contents
Section II
1. In whatever disease sleep is laborious, it is a deadly symptom; but if sleep does good, it is not deadly.
2. When sleep puts an end to delirium, it is a good symptom.
3. Both sleep and insomnolency, when immoderate, are bad.
4. Neither repletion, nor fasting, nor anything else, is good when more than natural.
5. Spontaneous lassitude indicates disease.
6. Persons who have a painful affection in any part of the body, and are in a great measure sensible of the pain, are disordered in intellect.
7. Those bodies which have been slowly emaciated should be slowly recruited; and those which have been quickly emaciated should be quickly recruited.
8. When a person after a disease takes food, but does not improve in strength, it indicates that the body uses more food than is proper; but if this happen when he does not take food, it is to be understood evacuation is required.
9. When one wishes to purge, he should put the body into a fluent state.
10. Bodies not properly cleansed, the more you nourish the more you injure.
11. It is easier to fill up with drink than with food.
12. What remains in diseases after the crisis is apt to produce relapses.
13. Persons in whom a crisis takes place pass the night preceding the paroxysm uncomfortably, but the succeeding night generally more comfortably.
14. In fluxes of the bowels, a change of the dejections does good, unless the change be of a bad character.
15. When the throat is diseased, or tubercles (phymata) form on the body, attention must paid to the secretions; for if they be bilious, the disease affects the general system; but if they resemble those of a healthy person, it is safe to give nourishing food.
16. When in a state of hunger, one ought not to undertake labor.
17. When more food than is proper has been taken, it occasions disease; this is shown by the treatment.
18. From food which proves nourishing to the body either immediately or shortly, the dejections also are immediate.
19. In acute diseases it is not quite safe to prognosticate either death or recovery.
20. Those who have watery discharges from their bowels when young have dry when they are old; and those who have dry discharges when they are young will have watery when they are old.
21. Drinking strong wine cures hunger.
22. Diseases which arise from repletion are cured by depletion; and those that arise from depletion are cured by repletion; and in general, diseases are cured by their contraries.
23. Acute disease come to a crisis in fourteen days.
24. The fourth day is indicative of the seventh; the eighth is the commencement of the second week; and hence, the eleventh being the fourth of the second week, is also indicative; and again, the seventeenth is indicative, as being the fourth from the fourteenth, and the seventh from the eleventh.
25. The summer quartans are, for the most part, of short duration; but the autumnal are protracted, especially those occurring near the approach of winter.
26. It is better that a fever succeed to a convulsion, than a convulsion to a fever.
27. We should not trust ameliorations in diseases when they are not regular, nor be much afraid of bad symptoms which occur in an irregular form; for such are commonly inconstant, and do not usually continue, nor have any duration.
28. In fevers which are not altogether slight, it is a bad symptom for the body to remain without any diminution of bulk, or to be wasted beyond measure; for the one state indicates a protracted disease, and the other weakness of body.
29. If it appear that evacuations are required, they should be made at the commencement of diseases; at the acme it is better to be quiet.
30. Toward the commencement and end of diseases all the symptoms are weaker, and toward the acme they are stronger.
31. When a person who is recovering from a disease has a good appetite, but his body does not improve in condition, it is a bad symptom.
32. For the most part, all persons in ill health, who have a good appetite at the commencement, but do not improve, have a bad appetite again toward the end; whereas, those who have a very bad appetite at the commencement, and afterward acquire a good appetite, get better off.
33. In every disease it is a good sign when the patient's intellect is sound, and he is disposed to take whatever food is offered to him; but the contrary is bad.
34. In diseases, there is less danger when the disease is one to which the patient's constitution, habit, age, and the season are allied, than when it is one to which they are not allied.
35. In all diseases it is better that the umbilical and hypogastric regions preserve their fullness; and it is a bad sign when they are very slender and emaciated; in the latter case it is dangerous to administer purgatives.
36. Persons in good health quickly lose their strength by taking purgative medicines, or using bad food.
37. Purgative medicines agree ill with persons in good health.
38. An article of food or drink which is slightly worse, but more palatable, is to be preferred to such as are better but less palatable.
39. Old have fewer complaints than young; but those chronic diseases which do befall them generally never leave them.
40. Catarrhs and coryza in very old people are not concocted.
41. Persons who have had frequent and severe attacks of swooning, without any manifest cause, die suddenly.
42. It is impossible to remove a strong attack of apoplexy, and not easy to remove a weak attack.
43. Of persons who have been suspended by the neck, and are in a state of insensibility, but not quite dead, those do not recover who have foam at the mouth.
44. Persons who are naturally very fat are apt to die earlier than those who are slender.
45. Epilepsy in young persons is most frequently removed by changes of air, of country, and of modes of life.
46. Of two pains occurring together, not in the same part of the body, the stronger weakens the other.
47. Pains and fevers occur rather at the formation of pus than when it is already formed.
48. In every movement of the body, whenever one begins to endure pain, it will be relieved by rest.
49. Those who are accustomed to endure habitual labors, although they be weak or old, bear them better than strong and young persons who have not been so accustomed.
50. Those things which one has been accustomed to for a long time, although worse than things which one is not accustomed to, usually give less disturbance; but a change must sometimes be made to things one is not accustomed to.
51. To evacuate, fill up, heat, cool, or otherwise, move the body in any way much and suddenly, is dangerous; and whatever is excessive is inimical to nature; but whatever is done by little and little is safe, more especially when a transition is made from one thing to another.
52. When doing everything according to indications, although things may not turn out agreeably to indication, we should not change to another while the original appearances remain.
53. Those persons who have watery discharges from the bowels when they are young, come off better than those who have dry; but in old age they come off worse, for the bowels in aged persons are usually dried up.
54. Largeness of person in youth is noble and not unbecoming; but in old age it is inconvenient, and worse than a smaller structure.