Book 1
14
The symptoms of distension are, fevers, pains, and rigors (for generally they are free of rigors, and of pain when the heat is small, and hence abscess about the spleen is sometimes latent); for the viscus is porous and insensible even in health: they are swollen, dropsical, of a dark-green colour, along with disquietude, dyspnœa as if from weight of the chest, for the evil is well marked. Even to its upper parts the abdomen is filled with a flatus (pneuma), thick, misty, humid in appearance but not in reality; much desire of coughing comes on, and their expectoration is small and dry. If there be watery discharges from the bowels, they at first bring some slight relief; but if they increase, they waste the patient, and yet nevertheless they do good.
14
But, if it should break, pure concocted pus is never discharged, but whitish and ashy, sometimes feculent, or livid. If the abscess become deeper, the fluid is dark, when likewise some of the juice of the melted spleen is discharged. In certain cases, entire portions of the spleen have been brought up, for the spleen is of a soluble nature. And if the ulcer does not heal, but remains for a long time, they lose appetite, become cachectic, swollen, unseemly to look at, having many ulcers on all parts of the body, especially on the legs, where the sores are round, livid, hollow, foul, and difficult to heal. Wasted thereby, they expire.
