Book 3
4
But there is another uncertainty which concerns even the days themselves, since the ancients chiefly preferred the odd days and termed them critical, as though then the fate of the sick man was decided. These were the third, fifth, seventh, ninth, eleventh, fourteenth and twenty-first days, the most importance being attached to the seventh, next to the fourteenth and then to the twenty-first. Therefore they administered food to their patients as follows: they awaited paroxysms on odd days, and after that they gave food, as though slighter paroxysms were impending, insomuch that Hippocrates, when the fever desisted on any other than an odd day, was accustomed to fear a recurrence. Asclepiades has justly repudiated this as false, and he said that no day was more or less dangerous to patients for being even or odd. For sometimes even days are the worse, and it is more suitable to give food after paroxysms on these days. Sometimes even in the course of the same fever the daily order changes, and that day becomes graver which had wont to have more of a remission; and besides, the fourteenth day itself, which the ancients confessed to be of great importance, is an even day. Since they held that the eighth day had the character of the first day, because from it began the second numbering of seven, they contradicted themselves in not giving more importance to the eighth, tenth and twelfth days, for they gave more to the ninth and eleventh. After doing this without any rational probability, they went on from the eleventh, not to the thirteenth, but to the fourteenth day. There is even in Hippocrates this statement, that the fourth day is the gravest in the case of those whom the seventh day is to liberate. So according to that very authority, there may be on an even day both a graver fever and a certain sign of what will happen. In another passage the same authority regarded each fourth day, namely, the fourth, seventh, eleventh, fourteenth, and seventeenth, as the most effective in both respects. Thus he passed from an odd system of reckoning to an even one, yet did not, even then, keep to his proposition; for the eleventh is not the fourth day after the seventh, but the fifth. It is clear enough that by whatever reasoning we view this numbering, there is to be found nothing rational in that authority at least. But in these matters indeed the Pythagorean numbers, then quite famous, deceived the ancients, since here also the practitioner ought not to count days, but observe the actual paroxysms, and from these infer when food should be given.
