Note 663 — BOOK I.—OF THE EPIDEMICS.

This is evidently a well-marked case of puerperal fever, or of fever complicated with the puerperal state. There is nothing particularly interesting in Galen’s commentary on it. He states that the application made in order to remove the suppression of the lochial discharge may either have been a pessary or a suppository. It seems most likely to have been the former. On the composition of the ancient pessaries, see Paulus Ægineta, Book VII., 24. He remarks that the symptoms first stated are unfavorable, but not necessarily fatal, until we come to the coldness of the extremities, which is an extremely mortal symptom in the beginning of a disease when combined with a very violent fever. The modern reader will be struck with the expression that “the attendants seldom put her in mind” to make water; it is very descriptive, however, of the state of stupor the patient was in when she was so insensible that she did not attend to the calls of nature.