CLASSIC 148 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Rarefaction, Atomism
Document Summary
Krisis: used to organize observations and to keep track of a disease"s progress. In epidemics, need to know a patient"s mode of life, his pursuits, his age, his speech, thoughts, habits of sleep, climate, etc. Examine all aspects of a patient to determine the disease and how serious it is. Must determine significance of all these signs, or simainei in greek. In epidemics, hippocrates discusses ripe vs unripe, good place vs bad place, good time vs bad time. Therefore, hippocrates interprets these elements as signs. He is using signs in the traditional way: to determine what is going to happen in the future. Bad air was supposed to be the reason you got malaria. Every disease is in fact a cultural construct. Case 5 of case notes of epidemics is rewritten to be in line with the pattern of case 4. The purpose is to observe, not to make the cases sound similar.
