Note 535 — ON REGIMEN IN ACUTE DISEASES.

Galen, in his Commentary on this passage, states that when a disease of a mild character prevailed generally, it was called an epidemic; and when of a malignant nature, it was called the plague. (See further Paulus Ægineta, Book II., 36, Syd. Soc. edition.) It will be remarked that I have included the word (not) in brackets. This I have done because not only the reading, as given in the common editions of Galen, is in its favor, but because the sense appears to me to require it. Surely when diseases are of an epidemic character they are similar; but when they are sporadic, they are not similar. M. Littré, however, rejects it altogether.