PART 20
Fevers come to a crisis on the same days as to number on which men
recover and die. For the mildest class of fevers, and those originating
with the most favorable symptoms, cease on the fourth day or earlier;
and the most malignant, and those setting in with the most dangerous
symptoms, prove fatal on the fourth day or earlier. The first class
of them as to violence ends thus: the second is protracted to the
seventh day, the third to the eleventh, the fourth to the fourteenth,
the fifth to the seventeenth, and the sixth to the twentieth. Thus
these periods from the most acute disease ascend by fours up to twenty.
But none of these can be truly calculated by whole days, for neither
the year nor the months can be numbered by entire days. After these
in the same manner, according to the same progression, the first period
is of thirty-four days, the second of forty days, and the third of
sixty days. In the commencement of these it is very difficult to determine
those which will come to a crisis after a long interval; for these
beginnings are very similar, but one should pay attention from the
first day, and observe further at every additional tetrad, and then
one cannot miss seeing how the disease will terminate. The constitution
of quartans is agreeable to the same order. Those which will come
to a crisis in the shortest space of time, are the easiest to be judged
of; for the differences of them are greatest from the commencement,
thus those who are going to recover breathe freely, and do not suffer
pain, they sleep during the night, and have the other salutary symptoms,
whereas those that are to die have difficult respiration, are delirious,
troubled with insomnolency, and have other bad symptoms. Matters being
thus, one may conjecture, according
[p. 56] to the time, and each additional
period of the diseases, as they proceed to a crisis. And in women,
after parturition, the crises proceed agreeably to the same ratio.
