6. Inasmuch as this work is entitled the Book of Prognostics, so it turns on the prescience πρόνοια, that is to say, the foreknowledge of the physician, which Hippocrates recommends to physicians for three reasons: first, for the confidence of mankind, which it will conciliate to the physician; then because it will free the practitioner from all blame, if he has announced beforehand the fatal result of diseases; and further, as being a very great instrument in effecting the cure.
7. Like the Coan priests, Hippocrates drew his Prognostics from a comparison of disease with health. This he held to be of so great importance, that he first delivers physiological semeiotics, and then adds pathological.
8. In calculating and judging of signs he neglected neither age nor sex, and, in the first place, directed his mind to the power of habit on the human body.
9. Nor did Hippocrates stop here, but directed care to be had of the attack of epidemics, and the condition of the season.
10. The Prognostics of Hippocrates are not of one time or place, but extend through every age, and through the whole world; inasmuch as the prognostic signs have been proved to be true in Libya, in Delos, and in Scythia, and it should be well known that every year, and at every season of the year, bad symptoms bode ill, and good symptoms good.
11. But he who would wish to know properly beforehand those who will recover from a disease, and those who will die, and those in whom the disease will persevere for many days, and those in whom it will last for a few, should be able to comprehend and estimate the doctrine of all the signs, and weigh in his mind and compare together their strength. The Hippocratic foreknowledge rests not only on the observation of the signs, but also on the understanding of them.
12. The Book of Prognostics exhibits observations of acute diseases, and of chronic arising from them, in which Hippocrates has diligently noted the times and modes of the crises.
13. Such is the authority of critical days and signs, that in those fevers which cease without the symptoms of resolution, and not upon critical days, a relapse is to be expected.
14. The series of critical days which Hippocrates delivers, proceeds solely upon the observation of nature. Yet neither can any of them be exactly numbered by entire days, since neither the year nor the months are usually numbered by entire days.”
Dr. Ermerins, in the remaining part of his Essay, shows, in a very lucid manner, that the rules of Prognosis laid down in this treatise by Hippocrates, are manifestly those by which he is regulated in his other works, and more especially in the Epidemics and Aphorisms. We must not, however, occupy room with any further exposition of the contents of this important treatise, which does equal credit to the author himself, and to the medical system of education pursued in the learned university from which it emanated.