5 After such signs the only thing to pray for is that the disease may be a long one, for so it must be unless it kills. Nor is there any other hope of life in grave illnesses except that the patient may avoid the attack of the disease by protracting it, and that it may be prolonged for sufficient time to afford opportunity for treatment. At the onset, however, there are certain signs from which it is possible to conclude that the disease, even if it be not fatal, nevertheless is going to last rather a long time: when in fevers which are not acute a cold sweat breaks out over the head and neck only, or when there is general sweating without the fever subsiding, or when the patient is at one time cold, at another time hot, or his colour changes from moment to moment, or when in the course of fever there is a congestion in some part, which does not lead the way to recovery, or when the patient wastes a little for a considerable time, again if the urine is at one time clear and limpid, at another time has some sediment which is slimy, white or red, or if there[p. 109] is in the sediment an appearance of bread crumbs, or it sends up bubbles.
De Medicina. Celsus. W. G. Spencer. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard University Press. 1971 (Republication of the 1935 edition).
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