Volume 3

The genuine works of Hippocrates / translated from the Greek with a preliminary discourse and annotations by Francis Adams ... In two volumes.

  • Hippocrates.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The genuine works of Hippocrates / translated from the Greek with a preliminary discourse and annotations by Francis Adams ... In two volumes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    483/504 (page 463)
    18. The bones of children are thinner and softer, for this reason, that they contain more blood [than those of adults] ; and they are porous and spongy, and neither dense nor hard. And when wounded to a similar or inferior degree by weapons of the same or even of an inferior power, the bone of a young person more readily and quickly suppurates, and that in less time than the bone of an older person ; and in accidents, which are to prove fatal, the younger person will die sooner than the elder. But if the bone is laid bare of flesh, one must attend and try to find out, what even is not obvious to the sight, and discover whether the bone be broken and contused, or only contused ; and if, when there is an indentation in the bone, whether contusion, or fracture, or both be joined to it; and if the bone has sustained any of these injuries, we must give issue to the blood by perforating the bone with a small trepan, observing the greatest precautions, for the bone of young per- sons is thinner and more superficial than that of elder persons.’ 19. When a person has sustained a mortal wound on the head, which cannot be cured, nor his life preserved, you may form an opinion of his approaching dissolution, and foretell what is to happen from the followmg symptoms which such a person experiences.” When a bone is broken, or cleft, or contused, or otherwise injured, and when by mistake it has not been discovered, and neither the raspatory nor trepan has been applied as required, but the case has been neglected as if the bone were sound, fever will generally come on before the fourteenth day if in winter, and in summer the fever usually seizes after seven days. And when this happens, the wound loses its colour, and the inflammation dies in it ; and it becomes glutinous, and appears like a pickle, bemg of a tawny and 1 Although these directions of our author regarding the treatment of children be most important, I am not aware that any other of the ancient authorities has shown his sense of their value of them by repeating them. It is well known that in children there is but one table, and thatit is very thin. Our author, as remarked above, does not entirely omit the operation in the case of children, but uses a small trepan. ® The reader will again remark an instance of our author’s fondness for prognosis, and his observance of the rule at all times to prevent the surgeon from committing himself by attempting hopeless cases. Celsus, writing in the same spirit, says, “ Ante omnia scire medicum oportere, que vulnera insanabilia sint, que difficilem f curationem habeant; . .. non attingere, nec subire speciem ejus, ut occisi, quem sors ipsius interemit.” (v, 26.)