Coction and Crisis (Pepsis)
Disease is a slow cooking: the body simmers its corrupt humours to ripeness, and on the appointed day a crisis boils them out.
Greek physicians imagined illness as a kind of cooking. The body's innate heat had to "concoct" the raw, morbid humours behind a fever until they reached maturity, much as fruit ripens or a stew thickens. Once coction was complete, a turning point called the crisis expelled the now-ripened matter through sweat, urine, or other discharge, and the patient recovered. By reading signs of coction in the urine, sputum, and stool, the doctor could forecast whether the cure would come, and on which "critical day" to expect it.
How it traveled
- EpidemiarumKos · -370explains
Key passages(20)
In all dangerous cases you should be on the watch for all favourable coctions of the evacuations from all parts, or for fair and critical abscessions. Coctions signify nearness of crisis and sure reco
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De curatione diuturnorum morborum libri duo · Aretaeus of Cappadocia
CHAPTER VII. CURE OF CŒLIACS. IF the stomach be irretentive of the food, and if it pass through undigested, unchanged and crude, so that nothing ascends into the body, we call such persons cœliacs; be
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2 The weak, however, among whom are a large portion of townspeople, and almost all those fond of letters, need greater precaution, so that care may re-establish what the character of their constitutio
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But those fevers which were altogether continuous and never intermitted at all, but in all cases grew worse after the manner of semitertians, with remission during one day followed by exacerbation dur
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The urine that was passed was copious, not in proportion to, but far exceeding, the drink administered. Yet the urine too that was passed showed a great malignancy. For it had neither the proper consi
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De curatione acutorum morborum libri duo · Aretaeus of Cappadocia
CHAPTER X. CURE OF PLEURISY. IN cases of Pleurisy there is no time for procrastination, nor for putting off the great remedy. For the fever, being very acute, hastens to a fatal termination; the pain
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De diaeta in morbis acutis · Hippocrates
Appendix 10 If, in a winter fever, the tongue be rough, and if there be swoonings, it is likely to be the remission of the fever. Nevertheless such a person is to be kept upon a restricted diet, with
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De diaeta in morbis acutis · Hippocrates
Appendix 3 Hypochondria inflamed not from retention of flatus, tension of the diaphragm, checked respiration, with dry orthopnoea, when no pus is formed, but when these complaints are connected with o
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But when summer came, and during autumn occurred many continuous but not violent fevers, which attacked persons who were long ailing without suffering distress in any other particular manner; for the
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In these diseases most died on the sixth day, as did Epaminondas, Silenus and Philiscus the son of Antagoras. Those who had the swellings by the ears had a crisis on the twentieth day, but these subsi
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During winter, near the time of the winter solstice, and continuing until the equinox, the ardent fevers and the phrenitis still caused many deaths, but their crises changed. Most cases had a crisis o
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CASE I Pythion, who lived by the temple of Earth, was seized with trembling which began in the hands. First day. Acute fever; wandering. Second day. General exacerbation. Third day. Same symptoms. Fou
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CASE V Chaerion, who lay sick in the house of Demaenetus, was seized with fever after drinking. At once there was painful heaviness of the head; no sleep; bowels disturbed with thin, rather bilious st
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Many were attacked by the erysipelas all over the body when the exciting cause was a trivial accident or a very small wound; especially when the patients were about sixty years old and the wound was i
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CASE X In Abdera Nicodemus after venery and drunkenness was seized with fever. At the beginning he had nausea and cardialgia; thirst; tongue parched ; urine thin and black. Second day. The fever incre
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CASE XII In Larisa a maiden was seized with an acute fever of the ardent type. Sleeplessness; thirst; tongue sooty and parched; urine of good colour, but thin. Second day. In pain; no sleep. Third day
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CASE VI In Abdera Pericles was seized with acute fever, continuous and painful; much thirst; nausea; could not retain what he drank. There was slight enlargement of the spleen and heaviness in the hea
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CASE VIII In Abdera Anaxion, who lay sick by the Thracian gate, was seized with acute fever. Continuous pain in the right side; a dry cough, with no sputa on the first days. Thirst ; sleeplessness; ur
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II. WHY DO TREES AND SEEDS THRIVE BETTER WITH RAIN THAN WITH WATERING? WHETHER is it because (as Laitus thinks) showers, parting the earth by the violence of their fall, make passages, whereby the wat
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XXVII. WHY DOES MUST, IF THE VESSEL STAND IN THE COLD, CONTINUE LONG SWEET? Is it because the changing of the sweet must into wine is concoction, but cold hinders concoction, because this is caused by
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