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OF ARETÆUS, THE CAPPADOCIAN. CAUSES AND SYMPTOMS OF ACUTE DISEASE
BOOK I.
CHAPTER X. ON PLEURISY
[p. 256]
adhering to the bones, which is named succingens.
When inflammation occurs in it, and there is heat with cough
and parti-coloured sputa, the affection is named Pleurisy. But
all these symptoms must harmonise and conspire together as
all springing from one cause; for such of them as occur separately
from different causes, even if they all occur together,
are not called pleurisy. It is accompanied by acute pain of
the clavicles; heat acrid; decubitus on the inflamed side easy,
for thus the membrane (pleura) remains in its proper seat,
but on the opposite side painful; for by its weight, the inflammation
and suspension of the membrane, the pain stretches to
all its adhesions at the shoulders and clavicles; and in certain
cases even to the back and shoulder blade; the ancients called
this affection Dorsal pleurisy. It is attended with dyspnœa, insomnolency,
anorexia, florid redness of the cheeks, dry cough,
difficult expectoration of phlegm, or bilious, or deeply tinged
with blood, or yellowish; and these symptoms observe no
order, but come and go irregularly; but, worst of all, if the
bloody sputa cease, and the patients become delirious; and
sometimes they become comatose, and in their somnolency
the mind wavers.
But if the disease take a bad turn, all the symptoms getting
worse, they die within the seventh day by falling into syncope;
or, if the commencement of the expectoration, and the
more intense symptoms occurred with the second hebdomad,
they die on the fourteenth day. It sometimes happens that
in the intermediate period there is a transference of all the
symptoms to the lungs; for the lung attracts to itself, being
both porous and hot, and being moved for the attraction of
the substances around, when the patient is suddenly suffocated
by metastasis of the affection. But if the patient pass this
period, and do not die within the twentieth day, he becomes
affected with empyema. These, then, are the symptoms if
the disease get into a bad state.
