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occur among the women and children, and least
of all among the old men ; and lest those that get
better lapse into quartans, and from quartans into
dropsies. But if the winter be southerly, rainy and
mild, and the spring be northerly, dry and wintry,
in the first place women with child whose delivery
is due by spring suffer abortion ; and if they do
bring forth, their children are weak and sickly,
so that either they die at once, or live puny, weak
and sickly. Such is the fate of the women. The
others have dysenteries and dry ophthalmia, and
in some cases catarrhs descend from the head to
the lungs. Phlegmatics are liable to dysenteries,
and women also, phlegm running down from the
brain because of the humidity of their constitution.
The bilious have dry ophthalmia because of the
warm dryness of their flesh. Old men have catarrhs
because of their flabbiness and the wasting of their
veins, so that some die suddenly, while others
become paralyzed on the right side or the left. For
whenever, owing to the winter being southerly
and the body warm, neither brain nor veins are
hardened, a northerly, dry, cold spring supervening,
the brain, just at the time when it ought to have been
relaxed along with spring and purged by cold in the
head and hoarseness, congeals and hardens, so that
the heat of summer having suddenly supervened and
the change supervening, these diseases befall. Such
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