On Regimen In Acute Diseases   

two, three, or more days; nor do those using the juice know that
they are injured in swallowing them, when they do not commence with
the draught seasonably. But this they guard against, and know that
it does much mischief, if, before the disease be concocted, the
patient swallow unstrained ptisan, when accustomed to use strained.
All these things are strong proofs that physicians do not conduct
the regimen of patients properly, but that in those diseases in
which total abstinence from food should not be enforced on patients
that will be put on the use of ptisans, they do enforce total
abstinence; that in those cases in which there should be no change
made from total abstinence to ptisans, they do make the change; and
that, for the most part, they change from abstinence to ptisans,
exactly at the time when it is often beneficial to proceed from
ptisans almost to total abstinence, if the disease happen to be in the
state of exacerbation. And sometimes crude matters are attracted
from the head, and bilious from the region near the chest, and the
patients are attacked with insomnolency, so that the disease is not
concocted; they become sorrowful, peevish, and delirious; there are
flashes of light in their eyes, and noises in their ears; their
extremities are cold, their urine unconcocted; the sputa thin,
saltish, tinged with an intense color and smell; sweats about the
neck, and anxiety; respiration, interrupted in the expulsion of the
air, frequent and very large; expression of the eyelids dreadful;
dangerous deliquia; tossing of the bed-clothes from the breast; the
hands trembling, and sometimes the lower lip agitated. These symptoms,
appearing at the commencement, are indicative of strong delirium,
and patients so affected generally die, or if they escape, it is
with a deposit, hemorrhage from the nose, or the expectoration of
thick matter, and not otherwise. Neither do I perceive that physicians
are skilled in such things as these; how they ought to know such
diseases as are connected with debility, and which are further
weakened by abstinence from food, and those aggravated by some other
irritation; those by pain, and from the acute nature of the disease,
and what affections and various forms thereof our constitution and
habit engender, although the knowledge or ignorance of such things
brings safety or death to the patient. For it is a great mischief if
to a patient debilitated by pain, and the acute nature of the disease,
one administer drink, or more ptisan, or food, supposing that the
debility proceeds from inanition. It is also disgraceful not to
recognize a patient whose debility is connected with inanition, and to
pinch him in his diet; this mistake, indeed, is attended with some
danger, but much less than the other, and yet it is likely to expose
one to much greater derision, for if another physician, or a private
person, coming in and knowing what has happened, should give to eat or
drink those things which the other had forbidden, the benefit thus
done to the patient would be manifest. Such mistakes of
practitioners are particularly ridiculed by mankind, for the physician
or nonprofessional man thus coming in, seems as it were to resuscitate
the dead. On this subject I will describe elsewhere the symptoms by
which each of them may be recognized.
12. And the following observations are similar to those now made
respecting the bowels. If the whole body rest long, contrary to usage,
it does not immediately recover its strength; but if, after a
protracted repose, it proceed to labor, it will clearly expose its
weakness. So it is with every one part of the body, for the feet
will make a similar display, and any other of the joints, if, being
unaccustomed to labor, they be suddenly brought into action, after a
time. The teeth and the eyes will suffer in like manner, and also
every other part whatever. A couch, also, that is either softer or
harder than one has been accustomed to will create uneasiness, and
sleeping in the open air, contrary to usage, hardens the body. But
it is sufficient merely to state examples of all these cases. If a
person having received a wound in the leg, neither very serious nor
very trifling, and he being neither in a condition very favorable to