Kitap 1
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Such symptoms as accompany this disease in its acute form have been already detailed by me. But if it become inveterate, the patients are not free from harm even in the intervals, but are languid, spiritless, stupid, inhuman, unsociable, and not disposed to hold intercourse, nor to be sociable, at any period of life; sleepless, subject to many horrid dreams, without appetite, and with bad digestion; pale, of a leaden colour; slow to learn, from torpidity of the understanding and of the senses; dull of hearing; have noises and ringing in the head; utterance indistinct and bewildered, either from the nature of the disease, or from the wounds during the attacks; the tongue is rolled about in the mouth convulsively in various ways. The disease also sometimes disturbs the understanding, so that the patient becomes altogether fatuous. The cause of these affections is coldness with humidity.
CHAPTER V. ON MELANCHOLY
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BLACK bile, if it make its appearance in acute diseases of the upper parts of the body, is very dangerous; or, if it pass downwards, it is not free from danger. But in chronic diseases, if it pass downward, it terminates in dysentery and pain of the liver. But in women it serves as a purgation instead of the menses, provided they are not otherwise in a dangerous condition. But if it be determined upwards to the stomach and diaphragm, it forms melancholy; for it produces flatulence and eructations of a fetid and fishy nature, and it sends rumbling wind downwards, and disturbs the understanding. On this account, in former days, these were called melancholics and flatulent persons. And yet, in certain of these cases, there is neither flatulence nor black bile, but mere anger and grief, and sad dejection of mind; and these were called melancholics, because the terms bile (χολὴ) and anger (ὀργὴ) are synonymous in import, and likewise black (μέλαινα), with much (πολλὴ) and furious (θηριώδης). Homer is authority for this when he says:—
