Notes on the current edition
Epidemics I and III
1.
ὑπδ in expressions denoting time seems in Hippocrates to mean
about or
during. The period is roughly from September 21 to November 8.
2.
That is, the winds were generally from the south, and such north winds as blew were light.
3.
Or, punctuating after
͂̔ωτα and
πλείστοισιν,
There were swellings beside the ears, in many cases on one side, but in most on both. The epidemio was obviously mumps.
4.
That is, with no symptoms indicative of a crisis.
5.
That is, nobody was ill enough to make a visit to the physician’s surgery (
ἱητρεῖον) necessary.
6.
Throughout
Epidemics
ἂχρως may mean, not merely
without colour, but
of bad colour. It certainly has this meaning in
Airs Waters Places, VII, l. ii. See p. 85.
7.
The words omitted by Kéhlewein mean
not intermitting altogether, but with exacerbations after the manner of tertians.
8.
There are often mixed infections in malaria. If the quartan be one of these, being the longest it outlasts the others. So the disease appears to have turned into a quartan.
9.
I take the pronoun
αὖτος throughout this chapter to refer to the remittent semitertian, or to sufferers from it.
10.
That is, the abscessions did not carry off the morbid humours, which spread again throughout the system.
11.
μωλυόμενα would mean
remained crude.
12.
It is not clear to what
πάντων and
τούτων refer. Probably
πάντων refers to all the semitertians, and
τούτων to the special type of them described in Chapter IX.
13.
That is, blood.
14.
The patient seemed to forget the necessity of breathing, and then to remember it and to breathe consciously.
15.
The word
ὑπολάπαρος is often applied to
σύντασις or
ἔντασις of the hypochondria. Galen (see Littré on
Epidemics III, Case II, Vol. III, p. 34) says that it means
without bulk, or
without swelling. This is possible if the word is etymologically connected with
λαπάζω. The translators are not very precise. Littré has
sans beaucoup de rénitence,
sans tumeur,
sans gonflement,
sans grand gonflement; Adams has
empty,
loose,
softish. In
Epidemics I, Case XII, occurs the phrase
φλεγμονὴ ὑπολάπαρος ἐκ τοῦ ἔσω μέρεος, from which it seems that the prefix
ὑπο- means
underneath, not
rather.
Empty underneath seems the primary meaning, and suggests a tightness, or inflammation, with nothing hard and bulky immediately beneath the surface to cause the tightness or inflammation. Perhaps the word also suggests the tenderness often found in the hypochoudria of malaria patients.
16.
I take
λεπτός here to mean
thinner than usual, than might have been expected, a meaning it has once or twice in the Hippocratic
Corpus. It might also mean
consisting of small pieoes. See on
Epidemics III, Case II (first series).
17.
I. e. near the statue of the founder of the city, or near the temple of the god who presided over the founding of the city.
18.
As we might say,
with a catch in it.
19.
See note, p. 188.