Kitap 2
1
Of the various sorts of weather, the north wind excites cough, irritates the throat, constipates the bowels, suppresses the urine, excites shiverings, as also pain of the lungs and chest. Nevertheless it is bracing to a healthy body, rendering it more mobile and brisk. The south wind dulls hearing, blunts the senses, produces headache, loosens the bowels; the body as a whole is rendered sluggish, humid, languid. The other winds, as they approximate to the north or south wind, produce affections corresponding to the one or other. Moreover, any hot weather inflates the liver and spleen, and dulls the mind; the result is that there are faintings, that there is an outburst of blood. Cold on the other hand brings about: at times tenseness of sinews which the Greeks call spasmos, at times the rigor which they call tetanos, the blackening of ulcerations, shiverings in fevers. In times of drought there arise acute fevers, runnings from the eyes, dysenteries, urinary difficulty, articular pains. In wet weather there occur chronic fevers, diarrhoeas, angina, canker, fits, and the loosening of sinews which the Greeks call paralysis. Not only does the weather of the day but also of the preceding days matter. If a dry winter has been accompanied by north winds, or again a spring by south winds and rain, generally there ensue runnings from the eye, dysenteries, fevers, and most of all in more delicate bodies, hence especially in women. If on the other hand south winds and rain have prevailed during winter, and the spring is cold and dry, pregnant women near their confinement are in danger of miscarrying; those indeed who reach term, give birth only to weaklings hardly alive. Other people are attacked by dry ophthalmia, and if elderly by choked nostrils and runnings from the nose. But when the south wind prevails from the beginning of winter to the end of spring, side pains, also the insanity of those in fever which is called phrenesis, are very rapidly fatal. And when hot weather begins in the spring, and lasts through the summer, severe sweating must ensue in cases of fever. If a summer has been kept dry by northerly winds, but in the autumn there are showers and south winds, there may then arise cough, runnings from the nose, hoarseness, and indeed in some, consumption. But if the autumn is dry owing to a north wind continuing to blow, all those with more delicate bodies, among whom, as I have mentioned, are women, enjoy good health. The harder constitutions, however, may possibly be attacked by dry ophthalmias, and by fevers, some acute, some chronic, also by those maladies which arise from black bile.
