Book 1
6
An inhuman calamity! an unseemly sight! a spectacle painful even to the beholder! an incurable malady! owing to the distortion, not to be recognised by the dearest friends; and hence the prayer of the spectators, which formerly would have been reckoned not pious, now becomes good, that the patient may depart from life, as being a deliverance from the pains and unseemly evils attendant on it. But neither can the physician, though present and looking on, furnish any assistance, as regards life, relief from pain or from deformity. For if he should wish to straighten the limbs, he can only do so by cutting and breaking those of a living man. With them, then, who are overpowered by the disease, he can merely sympathise. This is the great misfortune of the physician.
CHAPTER VII. ON ANGINA, OR QUINSEY
7
ANGINA is indeed a very acute affection, for it is a compression of the respiration. But there are two species of it; for it is either an inflammation of the organs of respiration, or an affection of the spirit (pneuma) alone, which contains the cause of the disease in itself.
