... Disputatio De pleuritide

A pricking pain, which sometimes extends to the hypochondrium, and occasionally to the jugular; difficult and frequent respiration, a continuous fever, a cough, a hard and vibrating pulse, and lying on the affected side is more tolerable than on the healthy one.

It is distinguished from the pain in an inflammation of the liver by the fact that the latter is not pricking; furthermore, the cough there is perpetually dry, along with other symptoms.

As regards the prognosis: true pleurisy is an acute disease; for the most part, it has a fourteenth day as the term of the crisis; and if sputum appears around the beginning, it announces that the disease will be short (Hippocrates, Aph. 1. 12).

The crudest pleurisy is that in which nothing at all is expectorated; the second stage of crudity is that in which there is thin sanies; the third, that in which it is thicker; the fourth, that in which the sputum has reached perfect concoction, which, if it appears around the third or fourth day, it is unlikely that the disease will exceed the seventh.

It is certainly considered a bad sign to have expectorated well and then to have ceased expectorating entirely, in such a way that subsequently neither the heaviness in the chest nor the pain ceases.

This disease is frequently resolved in that the matter gradually exudes into the lungs and is expelled by cough, sometimes by a flux of urine; rarely through insensible perspiration; at other times by suppuration, which occurs either on the internal part—and is always dangerous—or it breaks out to the exterior.

And thus far concerning true Pleurisy: now concerning the spurious also [even]