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OF ARETÆUS, THE CAPPADOCIAN. CAUSES AND SYMPTOMS OF ACUTE DISEASE
BOOK I.
CHAPTER VII. ON ANGINA, OR QUINSEY
[p. 250]
The opposite symptoms attend the other species; namely,
collapse of the organs, and diminution of the natural size,
with intense feeling of suffocation, insomuch that it appears to
themselves as if the inflammation had disappeared to the internal
parts of the thorax, and had seized upon the heart and
lungs. This we call Synanche, as if from the disease inclining
inwardly and producing suffocation. It appears to me that
this is an illness of the spirit (pneuma) itself, which has under-gone
a morbid conversion to a hotter and drier state, without
any inflammation of the organ itself. Nor is this any great
wonder. For in the Charonæan caves the most sudden suffocations
occur from no affection of any organ,
The Charonæan ditches or pits
here mentioned, were in Phrygia.
See Strabo, xii. 8. They are mentioned
by Galen, de usu partium,
vii.; Epid.i.t.xvii. p. 10, ed. K”n;
and Pliny, H.N. vii. 93. Their pestilential
exhalations are often noticed
by ancient authors.
but the persons
die from one inspiration, before the body can sustain any
injury. But likewise a man will be seized with rabies, from
respiring the effluvia of the tongue of a dog, without having
been bitten. It is not impossible then, that such a change of
the respiration should occur within, since many other phenomena
which occur in a man bear a resemblance to external
causes, such as juices which become spoiled both within and
without. And diseases resemble deleterious substances, and
men have similar vomitings from medicines and from fevers.
Hence, also, it was not a wonderful thing, that in the
plague of Athens, certain persons fancied that poisonous
substances had been thrown into the wells in the Piræus
by the Peloponnesians; for these persons did not perceive
the affinity between a pestilential disease and deleterious
substances.
Cases of Cynanche are attended with inflammation of the
tonsils, of the fauces, and of the whole mouth; the tongue
protrudes beyond the teeth and lips; they have salivation, the
