Kitap 3
8
The bowel troubles in many cases turned out many and harmful. In the first place many were attacked by painful tenesmus, mostly childrenall in fact who were approaching pubertyand most of these died. Many lienteries. Cases of dysentery, but they tooI. c. as Galen suggests in his commentary, they were like the lienteries in not causing much pain. Lientery is not particularly painful. were not very painful. Stools bilious, greasy, thin and watery. In many cases this condition of the bowels constituted the disease itself, fever being sometimes absent and sometimes present.Littré in a long and obscure note argues that only ἄνευ πυρετῶν and not ἐν πυρετοῖσι can belong to the preceding phrase, apparently because it is illogical to say that fever was present when the disease consisted merely of unhealthy stools. But the writer does not wish to exclude fever; he merely wishes to exclude from this class of patient tenesmus, lientery and dysentery. The commentary of Galen, πολλοῖς ῦέ φησιν αὐτὸ τοῦτο γενέσθαι τὸ νόσημα, τουτέστι τὸ διαχωρεῖν τὰ τοιαῦτα· καὶ γὰρ καὶ χωρὶς πυρετῶν ἐνίοις τοῦτο γενέσθαι Φησι, does not, as Littré supposes, support his contention. The phrase καὶ χωρὶς πυρετῶν ἐνίοις τοῦτο γενέσθαι φησὶ implies καὶ ἐν πυρετοῖς τοῦτο ἐγένετο. Painful tormina and malignant colic. There were evacuations, though the bulk of the contents remained behind.It is hard to separate διέξοδοι from τῶν πολλῶν, yet the sense seems to require it. The next sentence states that these evacuations caused no relief, evidently because they did not clear the trouble from the bowel. Now if διέξοδοι be taken with τῶν πολλῶν, the only possible translation is evacuations of the many contents which were retained there, implying complete evacuation. Galen’s comment (Kéhn XVII, Part I, p. 708) bears out the former interpretation: τὰς δὲ διεξόδους, τουτέστὶ τὰς κενώσεις, αὐτοῖς συμβῆναι, πολλῶν ἐνόντων καὶ ἐπισχόντων . . . . . καὶ διὰ τοῦτο μηδὲ τοὺς πόνους λύειν τὰ διεξιόντα. πῶς γαρ ὀ͂όν τε λύειν αὐτά, πολλῶν ἔτι τῶν ἐπεχομένων όντων; It should be noticed that ἐπισχόντων is probably from ἐπίσχω (Galen’s ἐπεχομένων) and not from ἐπέχω, although I cannot find a parallel for intransitive ἐπίσχω in this sense. The evacuations did not take away the pains, and yielded with difficulty to the remedies administered. Purgings, in fact, did harm in most cases. Of those in this condition many died rapidly, though a few held out longer. In brief, all patients, whether the disease was prolonged or acute, died chiefly from the bowel complaints. For the bowels carried all off together.The writer has not expressed himself clearly in this chapter, which seems to be the roughest of rough notes. The last two sentences apparently mean:— (a) It was always the bowel complaints which caused most deaths. This was natural, since (b) all attacked by bowel complaints died.
