Prognostic

​19. And pains accompanied by fever about the loins and lower parts, if they attack the diaphragm, leaving the lower parts, are very fatal. Therefore, one must pay attention to the other signs, for if any of the other signs also appear bad, the patient is without hope. But if, while the disease rushes up towards the diaphragm, the other signs do not turn out bad, there are many hopes that this patient will develop an empyema. Hard and painful bladders are altogether dangerous and fatal; and they are more fatal when they occur with a continuous fever; for the pains from the bladders themselves are sufficient to kill; and the bowels do not discharge during this time, unless hard and by force; but it is resolved if purulent urine is passed, having a white and smooth sediment. But if neither the urine yields anything, nor the bladder becomes soft, and the fever is continuous, there is an expectation that the patient will perish in the first periods of the disease. This form of disease attacks children especially, from seven years of age until they reach fifteen.

​20. Fevers are resolved on the very same days in number, both those from which people recover and those from which they perish. For the mildest of fevers, and those established upon the safest signs, cease on the fourth day, or sooner; and the most malignant, and those occurring upon the most terrible signs, kill on the fourth day, or sooner. Thus, then, their first attack ends; the second is brought round to the seventh day; the third to the eleventh; the fourth to the fourteenth; the fifth to the seventeenth; the sixth to the twentieth. These, then, in the most acute diseases, end by an addition of four days up to twenty. But none of these can be numbered precisely in whole days; for neither the year nor the months are naturally numbered in whole days. After these, in the same manner and according to the same addition, the first period is thirty-four days, the second forty days, the third sixty days. Of these, it is most difficult at the beginning to recognize those that are going to be resolved in the longest time; for their beginnings are very similar; but one must observe from the first day, and investigate at each added four-day period; and it will not escape notice which way the disease will turn. The establishment of the fourth-day crises arises from such an order. But those that are going to be resolved in the shortest time are easier to recognize; for their differences are greatest from the beginning; for those who will survive have good respiration, are free from pain, sleep at night, and have all other signs very safe; but those who will perish become short of breath, delirious, sleepless, and have all other signs very bad. Thus, since these things occur in this way, one must form a conjecture, both by the time and by each addition, as the diseases progress towards the crisis. And according to the same ratio, crises also occur in women from childbed.