in their relation to the Seasons. 247 



tion of the Memoirs of the ancient Academy of Surgery, also 

 fm'nishes many examples of it. 



Hippocrates, we have said, had already remarked the fact of 

 the wonderful agreement between the seasons and the common 

 diseases, I add, that he pushed very far the determination of 

 the varied circumstances which bear relation to it ; and one 

 may affirm, without hazard, that his genius had measured all 

 its importance, discovered almost all its consequences, and 

 created so to speak its entire doctrine. 



He had established a sort of analogy or relation between the 

 action of the diurnal revolution and the action of the annual re- 

 volution of the sun relatively to the production of diseases : 

 As the year exhibits periods of Disease, the day also presents 

 the same. The morning was, in his opinion, analogous to the 

 spring ; noon represented the summer ; the evening cori'e- 

 sponded to autumn ; and the night to winter. Thus the year 

 was only a long day, and the day a contracted year. 



I purposely insist on this order of considerations. Many of 

 our classical writers, who belong by their doctrines to the school 

 of Hippocrates, have confirmed and developed by numerous 

 observations this clinical fact : — Such among others, not to 

 cite the most modern, were Sydenham, Piquer, Triller, Bail- 

 lou, Ramazzini, Huxam. Hence result the following proposi- 

 tions : — diseases appear differently during the day and night, 

 patients ai*e also differently affected during these periods • 

 and farther, physicians have remarked in general, that even at 

 the different epochs of the single diurnal period (that is the 

 time which elapses between the rising and setting of the sun), 

 diseases exhibit different phenomena, the value of which prac- 

 titioners can well estimate. The inflammatory diseases, those 

 which are characterised by the exaltation of the vital jjowers, 

 usually undergo their most powerful exacerbations towards 

 morning ; they find also, at this epoch, their most habitual in- 

 vasions. 



, The catarrhal and mucous fevers, both remarkable for the 

 slowness of tlieir movements, and the atony which accompanies 

 them, begin and are exasperated most frequently on the ap- 

 proach of night ; thus the tertian of Hippocrates. 



The bilious fevers, which in their characters seem to hold 



