[18] That this is so is plain if we consider the following pieces of evidence. First we have the more obvious symptoms, which all of us often experience and will continue so to do. In the first place, those of us who suffer from cold in the head, with discharge from the nostrils, generally find this discharge more acrid than that which previously formed there and daily passed from the nostrils; it makes the nose swell, and inflames it to an extremely fiery heat, as is shown if you put your hand upon it.
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And if the disease be present for an unusually long time, the part actually becomes ulcered, although it is without flesh and hard. But in some way the heat of the nostril ceases, not when the discharge takes place and the inflammation is present, but when the running becomes thicker and less acrid, being matured and more mixed than it was before, then it is that the heat finally ceases. But in cases where the evil obviously comes from cold alone, unaccompanied by anything else, there is always the same change, heat following chill and chill heat, and these supervene at once, and need no coction. In all other instances, where acrid and unmixed humours come into play, I am confident that the cause is the same, and that restoration results from coction and mixture.
De prisca medicina. Hippocrates. ed. William Henry Samuel Jones. London. 1923.
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