Prognosis in the Greek medicine (1)

Text
The Greek treatise uses such descriptions of the patient which are commonplace in the Akkadian Diagnostic Handbook.

Hippocratic Corpus, Prognostics 2:
(The Greek physician must look for the following symptoms on the patient’s face:) Nose sharp, eyes hollow, temples sunken, ears cold and contracted with their lobes turned outwards, the skin about the face hard and tense and parched, the colour of the face as a whole being yellow or black. (If the Greek physician fails to provide prognosis, he must then ask:) whether the patient has been sleepless, whether his bowels have been very loose, and whether he suffers at all from hunger. (If the disease persists, the physician should reexamine the patient, especially his eyes:) For if they (= the eyes) shun the light, or weep involutarily, or are distorted, or if one becomes less than the other, if the whites be red or livid or have black veins in them, should they be restless or protruding or very sunken or if the complexion of the whole face be changed - all these symptoms must be considered bad, and in fact fatal.

Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Hippocratic Corpus, Prognostics 2

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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