Book 5
26
Now canker, whatever its species, corrupts not only the part it attacks, but it also spreads; next it is distinguished by differing signs. For sometimes a redness, over and above the inflammation, surrounds the wound, and this spreads with pain (the Greeks term it erysipelas); at times the wound is black because its flesh has become corrupted, and this is still more intensified by putrefaction when the wound is moist, and from the black wound is discharged a pallid humour, which has a foul odour, and the granulations break down: at times also sinews and membranes undergo dissolution, and when a probe is introduced it passes to the side or downwards, and this lesion not infrequently affects the bone too; sometimes there arises what the Greeks call gangrene. The former varieties occur in any part of the body; gangrene in the extremities, that is, in the nails, armpits or groins, and generally in aged people or in those of a bad habit of body. The flesh in the wound becomes either black or livid, but dry and shrivelled; the skin near it is for the most part occupied by dusky pustules; then the skin around these becomes either pallid or livid, and usually wrinkled, deficient in sensation: farther away from the wound the skin is inflamed. All these things spread simultaneously, the ulceration into the pustules, the pustules into the pallid or livid part, that into the inflamed part, and that again into the sound flesh. Now together with the above an acute fever arises and great thirst: in some also delirium: others, although in their right minds, nevertheless stammer so that they can scarcely explain their feelings; the stomach begins to be affected: even the breath gets a foul odour. This disorder at its commencement admits of treatment; but when thoroughly established it is incurable, and most patients die in a cold sweat.
