The Complete Works of Claudius Galen, Vol. 18 Pt. 2

Ed. Chart. VIII. [589.]

Ed. Bas. V. (120.)

...is necessary. Let us, therefore, now speak with confidence, that this is nothing other than the constitution of the air that surrounds us, concerning which he wrote in the Aphorisms in this manner: If the winter becomes dry and northerly, and the spring rainy and southerly, then of necessity in the summer acute fevers, ophthalmias, and dysenteries occur, especially in women and those who have moist constitutions. These things, and those written subsequently, are prognostications of the conditions that arise in us from the cause of the surrounding environment, concerning which he taught in brief chapters in the Aphorisms, and dealt with most extensively in the books of the Epidemics; yet in this present Prognostic he omitted them, even though they belong to this theory. It would have been better, therefore, to have sought the cause of the omission of speaking of the divine [aspect] than to explain it falsely. But it seems to me that, on account of the magnitude of the undertaking, he did not add the instruction concerning the epidemic diseases to this book. Therefore, having completed it, he wrote at the very end these things: It is necessary also to always recognize immediately the arrival of epidemic diseases...