ABSTRACT
Now the brain hath been already described, together with the five senses which are made effective by means of the nerves that proceed from it, and the injuries which happen to them, and the symptoms of them, and their healing, and it is meet that now, after these matters, we should speak about all the ailments which arise in the mouth and in the throat. And it is necessary that we should first of all describe the strangles and distinguish the various forms of this ailment; for that it is Page 154 possible for many kinds of the strangles to exist in this region of the body, is evident to us from the treatise which Hippokrates wrote on the "foreknowledge of the acute sicknesses", wherein he says:-Strangles are a very difficult and evil disease, and they bring a man to his end very quickly. One kind doeth nothing which can be recognized either in the throat or in the neck, but they bring on obstinate pains and defective breathing, and it is this kind which choketh a man on the day wherein it attacketh him, or the day after, or on the third day. Another kind likewise produceth pains, and it also produceth red abscesses in the throat, which are very destructive, but this kind lasteth longer, little or much, than the former. And the kind in which, during the attack, the throat is swollen and the neck red, lasteth longer still. Nevertheless, through one kind of the strangles more particularly patients can live, when the neck and the breast are red, and also when the hard red pustule itself doth not return within. From these things a man may know that all the diseases, of whatever kinds they may
be, which occur in the region of the throat and which hurt the hearing, have one general name, and that the physician calleth them "the strangles". Now Hippokrates distinguished four kinds only, and he said that four diseases arose from them, and he described their symptoms; the following are the four diseases. The first kind existeth when there is a red abscess on the palate; now I call "palate" that part which is inside
Fol. 75a. the mouth, to which reacheth the end of the stomach I and of the throat. The second kind existeth when there is nothing visible in the mouth, and nothing on the palate, and nothing outside which will shew that any abscess is formed, and the patient only knoweth that the strangles are there by feeling them in his throat. The third kind existeth when, in addition to these, there is an abscess in the region which is outside the
Page 155 palate. I And the fourth kind existeth when there is an abscess both in the inside and on the outside of the throat. Now besides these there is another ailment in the neck when, as it sometimes happeneth, the vertebrae are ruptured towards the inside, and when the muscles that are associated with them come to be a kind of abscess, or ulcer, or sore, and when, as it sometimes happeneth, the stomach itself is deranged with them, and when the muscles that are fastened to the stomach in the throat are also diseased, and when the muscles of the throat by which the throat is set in motion· are diseased.
