[p. 257]
But if it take a favourable turn, there is a profuse hemorrhage
by the nostrils, when the disease is suddenly resolved;
then follow sleep and expectoration of phlegm, and afterwards
of thin, bilious matters; then of still thinner, and again of
bloody, thick, and flesh-like; and if, with the bloody, the bile
return, and with it the phlegm, the patient's convalescence is
secure; and these symptoms, if they should commence on the
third day, with an easy expectoration of smooth, consistent,
liquid, and (not) rounded sputa, the resolution takes place on
the seventh day, when, after bilious discharges from the
bowels, there is freedom of respiration, the mind settled, fever
diminishing, and return of appetite. But if these symptoms
commence with the second week, the resolution occurs on the
fourteenth day.
But if not so, it is converted into Empyema, as indicated
by rigors, pungent pains, the desire of sitting erect, and the
respiration becoming worse. It is then to be dreaded, lest,
the lungs suddenly attracting the pus, the patient should be
thereby suffocated, after having escaped the first and greater
evils. But if the abscess creep in between the ribs and separate
them, and point outwardly; or, if it burst into an intestine,
for the most part the patient recovers.
Among the seasons of the year winter most especially engenders
the disease; next, autumn; spring, less frequently;
but summer most rarely. With regard to age, old men are
most apt to suffer, and most readily escape from an attack;
for neither is there apt to be a great inflammation in an arid
frame; nor is there a metastasis to the lungs, for old age is
more frigid than any other age, and the respiration small, and
the attraction of all things deficient. Young men and adults
are not, indeed, very apt to suffer attacks; but neither, also, do
they readily recover, for from a slight cause they would not
experience even a slight attack of inflammation, and from
great attacks there is greater danger. Children are least of all
