[394] Clifton translates this clause of the sentence thus: “Even if there be but a small distance between them,” and, I think, correctly, although Coray is not quite satisfied with this interpretation. The stadium was nearly the eighth part of a Roman mile, that is to say, it consisted of 94½ French toises, or 625 English feet.
[395] In another place, I have given a summary of the information supplied by the ancient authors on this subject, (Paulus Æginata, Vol. I., 66.) Upon the whole, none of them gives so much valuable matter on it as our author. Coray has some elaborate annotations on this passage.
[396] It can scarcely admit of a doubt that our author here alludes to scurvy. (See Coray at this place, and Lind on Scurvy, iii., 1.) He also describes the disease distinctly in the second book of Prorrhetics, that is to say, if Hippocrates be actually the author of that book. See also Epidem. ii., 1; de Affection., de inter. affect.; Cælius Aurelianus, Tard. Pass. iii., 4; Celsus, iv., 9; Aëtius, x., 11; Pliny, H. N., xxv., 3; Aretæus, Morb. Diuturn, i., 14; and Paulus Ægineta, iii., 49; Marcellus, de Medic. ii.
[397] The leucophlegmasia is treated of in different parts of the Hippocratic treatises, as Aphor. vii., 29; de Morb. ii. By it he evidently meant a species of dropsy, as Galen remarks in his commentary on the Aphorisms (l. c.). It occurs in Aretæus’s chapter on dropsy. Morb. Diuturn. ii., 1; Octavius Horatianus, v. Celsus makes it to be synonymous with anasarca, iii., 21. Our author would seem to notice these varieties of dropsy as being affections to which pregnant women are subject.
[398] On hydrops uteri see the authorities quoted in the Commentary on Paulus Æginata, B. III., 48, Syd. Soc. edition. It may appear singular that hydatids of the womb should be particularly prevalent in the case of women that drink unwholesome water from marshes, and yet our author’s observation is confirmed by a modern authority as quoted by Coray: “Il a été également prouvé par les observations des Modernes, que les fausses grossesses produites par les hydatides; sont très-communes dans les pays marécageux, ou la plupart des habitans ont une constitution lâche, propre à l’affection scorbutique, qui y est presque endémique, qu’elles terminent plus ou moins tard par l’excrétion de ces hydatides.”—(Notes sur le Traité des Airs, &c., p. 106.) Sydenham, moreover, describes the symptoms of false pregnancy in much the same terms as our author. (Tract de Hydrop.)
[399] On the Thermal waters of the ancients, see Paulus Æginata, Vol. I., 72. I have treated fully of the ancient alum and nitre under στυπτηρία and λίτρον, in the Third Volume. Coray, in his notes on this passage, does not throw much light on this subject. The opinion here delivered by our author, that these metallic substances are produced by the operation of heat, is adopted and followed out by Aristotle towards the end of the third book on Meteorologia.
[400] Corny appears to me to be unnecessarily puzzled to account for our author’s statement, that saltish waters, although held to be purgative, are, in fact, astringent of the bowels. But, although their primary effect certainly be cathartic, is it not undeniable that their secondary effect is to induce or aggravate constipation of the bowels? Certain it is, moreover, that all the ancient authorities held salts to be possessed of desiccant and astringent powers. See Paulus Ægineta, Vol. III., under ἂλες.
[401] Aristotle discusses the subject in his Problems, ii., 9, 36, 37; ii., 15; i., 53; v., 34, and arrives at nearly the same conclusions as Hippocrates. See also Theophrastus de Sudoribus.
[402] I cannot hesitate in adopting the emendation suggested by Coray (ἀποσήθεσθαι) in place of the common reading (ἀποσήπεσθαι), which evidently has no proper meaning in this place. I am surprised that M. Littré should have hesitated in admitting it into the text.
[403] Athenæus, in like manner, praises rain water. Deipnos ii., 5.