Kitap 1
10
But if not so, it is converted into Empyema, as indicated by rigors, pungent pains, the desire of sitting erect, and the respiration becoming worse. It is then to be dreaded, lest, the lungs suddenly attracting the pus, the patient should be thereby suffocated, after having escaped the first and greater evils. But if the abscess creep in between the ribs and separate them, and point outwardly; or, if it burst into an intestine, for the most part the patient recovers.
10
Among the seasons of the year winter most especially engenders the disease; next, autumn; spring, less frequently; but summer most rarely. With regard to age, old men are most apt to suffer, and most readily escape from an attack; for neither is there apt to be a great inflammation in an arid frame; nor is there a metastasis to the lungs, for old age is more frigid than any other age, and the respiration small, and the attraction of all things deficient. Young men and adults are not, indeed, very apt to suffer attacks; but neither, also, do they readily recover, for from a slight cause they would not experience even a slight attack of inflammation, and from great attacks there is greater danger. Children are least of all liable to pleurisy, and in their case it is less frequently fatal; for their bodies are rare, secretions copious, perspiration and exhalation abundant; hence neither is a great inflammation formed. This is the felicity of their period of life in the present affection.
