Kitap 5
26
Even when these facts are known, there are still some other things to be learnt about wounds and ulcerations in general, of which we will now speak. From wounds, then, there comes out blood, or sanies, or pus. Blood everybody knows; sanies is thinner than blood, varying both in thickness and stickiness and colour. Pus is the thickest and whitest, more sticky than either sanies or blood. Now blood comes out from a fresh wound or from one which is already healing, sanies between these two periods, pus from an ulceration already beginning to heal. Again, the Greeks distinguish by name different kinds of sanies and pus. For there is a kind of sanies which is named either hidros or melitera; there is pus which is called alaeodes. Hidros is thin, whitish, and comes from a bad ulceration, especially when inflammation has followed upon a wound of a sinew. Melitera is thicker, stickier and whitish, something like honey. It is likewise discharged from bad ulcerations, when sinews near to joints have been wounded, and among such places especially from the knees. Elaeodes is thin, whitish, fatty, in colour and fattiness not unlike olive-oil; it appears in large ulcerations when they are healing. Blood is bad when it is too thin or too thick, livid or black in colour, or mixed with phlegm or variable; it is best when hot, red, moderately thick, and not sticky. Consequently from the first the treatment is more expeditious in the case of a wound from which good blood has flowed. Also later there is more hope in the case of wounds from which all the discharges are of the better kind. Thus sanies is bad when profuse, too thin, livid, or pallid or black or sticky or malodorous or when it erodes either the ulceration itself or the skin adjoining it; it is better when not profuse, moderately thick, reddish or whitish. But hidros is worse when it is profuse, thick, somewhat livid or pallid, stick, black, hot, malodorous; it is less serious when whitish, and when all the rest of its characteristics are the opposite of the foregoing. Melitera again is bad when profuse and very thick; better for being thinner and less copious. Amongst these discharges pus is the best; but it is likewise worse when profuse, thin, watery, and the more so if it is such from the beginning; and also if it is in colour like whey, if pallid, or livid, or like wine-lees; if, besides, it is malodorous, unless, however, it is the part which causes this odour. It is better, the smaller the quantity, the thicker and whiter; also if it is bland, odourless, uniform; none the less it should correspond in quantity with the size and age of the wound. For naturally there is more discharge, the larger the wound, si more when inflammation has not yet subsided. Elaeodes also is worse when large in quantity and but little fatty, the less in quantity and the more fatty the better.
