Note 467 — ON THE PROGNOSTICS.

The prognostics, drawn from the position in which the patient is found reclining, are mostly taken from the Coacæ Prænotiones, 497. As usual, however, Hippocrates has improved very much the materials which he avails himself of.

I would here point out a mistake which most of the modern translators have committed respecting the meaning of an expression contained in this paragraph. It is καὶ τὸ ξύμπαν σῶμα ὑγρον κείμενον, which Clifton, Moffat, and even Littré understand as descriptive of the body’s being in a moist state with sweat. Littré’s translation is, “Le corps entier en moiteur.” The translators forget that the word ὑγρὸν is used by the best classical authors to signify “relaxed” or “soft.” Thus Pindar, in his celebrated description of the eagle perched upon the sceptre of Jupiter, and lulled asleep by the power of music (every English scholar will remember Gray’s version of it in his Ode on the Progress of Poesy), has the expression ὑγρὸν νῶτον, which Heyne interprets by flexile and lubricum. (Ad Pyth., 1.) See also the Scholiast, in h. 1. Galen apprehends the meaning of the term as I have stated it: thus he defines it as applying to the position intermediate between complete extension and complete flexion, that is to say, half-bent or relaxed. Foës also renders the expression correctly by “corpus molliter positum.” (Œconom. Hippocrat.) See also Stephanus (p. 96, ed. Dietz), who decidedly states that the epithet (ὑγρὸς), in this place, means slightly bent or relaxed. Heurnius explains ὑγρὸν as signifying “molliter decumbens,” p. 189. Celsus renders the words in question by “cruribus paulum reductis,” ii., 3.