Book 1
5
But when they come to the termination of the illness, there are unconscious discharges of the urine, and watery discharges from the bowels, and in some cases an evacuation also of the semen, from the constriction and compression of the vessels, or from the pruriency of the pain, and titillation of the humours; for in these cases the pains are seated in the nerves. The mouth watery; phlegm copious, thick, cold, and, if you should draw it forth, you might drag out a quantity of it in the form of a thread. But, if with length of time and much pain, the matters within the chest ferment, but the restrained spirit (pneuma) agitates all things, and there is a convulsion and disorder of the same, a flood, as it were, of humours swells up to the organs of respiration, the mouth, and the nose; and if along with the humours the spirit be mixed, it appears like the relief of all the former feelings of suffocation. They accordingly spit out foam, as the sea ejects froth in mighty tempests; and then at length they rise up, the ailment now being at an end. At the termination, they are torpid in their members at first, experience heaviness of the head, and loss of strength, and are languid, pale, spiritless, and dejected, from the suffering and shame of the dreadful malady.
CHAPTER VI. ON TETANUS
