PART 3
III. I will now set forth clearly how each of the
foregoing questions ought to be investigated, and
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the tests to be applied. A city that lies exposed
to the hot winds--these are those between the winter
rising of the sun and its winter setting--when
subject to these and sheltered from the north winds,
the waters here are plentiful and brackish, and must
be near the surface,
1 hot in summer and cold in winter.
The heads of the inhabitants are moist and full of
phlegm, and their digestive organs are frequently
deranged from the phlegm that runs down into them
from the head. Most of them have a rather flabby
physique, and they are poor eaters and poor drinkers.
For men with weak heads will be poor drinkers, as
the after-effects are more distressing to them. The
endemic diseases are these. In the first place,
the women are unhealthy and subject to excessive
fluxes. Then many are barren through disease and
not by nature, while abortions are frequent. Children
are liable to convulsions and asthma, and to what
they think causes the disease of childhood, and to
be a sacred disease.
2 Men suffer from dysentery,
diarrhoea, ague, chronic fevers in winter, many
attacks
3 of eczema, and from hemorrhoids. Cases
of pleurisy, pneumonia, ardent fever, and of diseases
considered acute, rarely occur. These diseases
cannot prevail where the bowels are loose. Inflammations
of the eyes occur with running, but are not
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serious ; they are of short duration, unless a general
epidemic take place after a violent change. When
they are more than fifty years old, they are paralyzed
by catarrhs supervening from the brain, when the
sun suddenly strikes their head or they are chilled.
These are their endemic diseases, but besides, they
are liable to any epidemic disease that prevails
through the change of the seasons.