Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/178

 156 fflSTOR"! OF GREECE. distinct from, yet analogous to, the smallpox, a description no less clear than impressive has been left by the historian Thucy- dides, himself, not only a spectator but a sufferer. It is not one of the least of his merits, that his notice of the symptoms, given at so early a stage of medical science and observation, is such as to instruct the medical reader of the present age, and to enable the malady to be understood and identified. The observations, with which that notice is ushered in, deserve particular atten- tion. " In respect to this distemper (he says), let every man, physician or not, say what he thinks respecting the source from whence it may probably have arisen, and respecting the causes which he deems sufficiently powerful to have produced so great f revolution. But I, having myself had the distemper, and having seen others suffering under it, will state what it actually was, and will indicate, in addition, such other matters, as will furnish any man, who lays them to heart, with knowledge and the means of calculation beforehand, in case the same misfortune should ever again occur." ' To record past facts, as a basis for rational pre- 1839, p. 50) assimilate the pathological phenomena specified by Thucy- diles to different portions of the 'Eircdq/iiai of Hippokrates. M. Littre' thinks that the resemblance is not close or precise, so as to admit of the one being identified with the other. " Le tableau si frappant qu'en a trace* ce grand historien ne se reproduit pas certainement avec une nettete suffi- sante dans les brefs details donnes par Hippocrate. La maladie d'Athenes avoit un type si tranche", que tons ceux qui en ont parle ont du le reproduire dans ses parties essentielles." (Argument aux 2me Livre des Epide'mies, CEuvres d'Hippocrate, torn, v, p. 64.) There appears good reason to believe that the great epidemic which prevailed in the Roman world under Marcus Aurelius the Pestis Antoniniana was a renewal of what is called the Plague of Athens. 1 Thucyd. ii, 48. Aeyerw fiev oiiv irepi avrov. cif iKaarof yi-yvuaKei, /coi tarpbf Kal idtuTTjf, u<^ orov stubs fy v yevEadat. avrb, nal ruf vopi&i Tooavrrjc //era/3oAJ7f ticavuf elvai 6vvafj.iv if rb fisraaTr/aai fyw 6e olov re tyiyvero %e$u, Kal ap uv av rif GKOTTUV, i -ROTE xai av'&tf uv l%oi TL Trpoeiduf firi uyvoelv, ravra drpMav, avTOf rt I6ijv u)iXov Traa^ovraf. Demokritns, among others, connected the generation of these epidemics with his general system oC atoms, atmospheric effluvia, and elduZa : see Plutarch, Symposiac. viii, 9, p. 733 ; Demokriti Fragment, ed. Mullach. lib. iv, p. 409. The causes of the Athenian epidemic as given by Diodorus (xii, 58)