SECT. III.—FROM GALEN, WHAT TO CALL THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE DISEASE.
As headach is not the same complaint as fever, so neither are insomnolency, loss of appetite, heaviness of the whole body, and a sense of lassitude; and yet each of these symptoms, although different from fever, announces its approach. A fever setting in, and more especially in an acute manner, cannot escape our notice, nor even that of a person unacquainted with these matters. Or, if we should suppose that it might escape us, I should wonder if the patient himself could be ignorant of it for more than an hour. Wherefore I call that time the commencement of the disorder, when those who are beginning clearly to be affected with the fever betake themselves to bed.
Commentary. The whole of this Section is taken from Galen (de Diebus criticis), where the question is fully discussed. Aëtius, like our author, defines the commencement of a fever to be the time when the strength of the patient being overcome by the complaint, he is obliged to take to bed. On this point the Arabians venture to differ from the Greeks. Thus, Rhases and Avicenna reckon the commencement from the time when the patient first feels a departure from health.
The disagreement among the authorities upon this point is to be regretted, as it tends to obscure the doctrine of the critical days.