And then, too, there is another kind of fatal disease, that which is produced by over-exertion of the mental faculties.[1301] Nature has appointed certain laws as well for our maladies; quartan fevers never commence at the winter solstice, nor yet during the winter months; some diseases never attack us after the sixtieth year; some again disappear at the age of puberty, especially in females;[1302] while aged persons are but seldom affected by the plague. There are some diseases which attack whole nations; others prevail among classes; some among slaves,[1303] others among the higher ranks, and others among other classes of society. It has been remarked, in reference to this subject, that the plague always takes a course from the south towards the west,[1304] and scarcely ever in an opposite direction; it never appears in the winter, or lasts longer than three months.
And now to speak of the premonitory signs of death. Among these are laughter, in madness;[1305] in cases of delirium,[1306] the patient carefully folding the fringe or the plaits of the bedclothes;[1307] insensibility to the attempts of those who would rouse them from sleep; and involuntary discharges from the body, which it is not necessary here to particularize; but the most unequivocal signs of all, are certain appearances of the eyes and the nose, a lying posture with the face continually upwards, an irregular and feeble motion of the pulse,[1308] and the other symptoms, which have been observed by that prince of physicians, Hippocrates. At the same time that there are innumerable signs of death, there are none of health and safety; so much so, that Cato the Censor, when speaking to his son in relation to those who appear to be in good health, declared, as though it had been the enunciation of some oracle,[1309] that precocity in youth is a sign of an early death.[1310]
The number of diseases is infinite. Pherecydes of Scyros died from vast numbers of worms issuing from his body.[1311] Some persons are distressed by a perpetual fever; such was the case with C. Mæcenas; during the last three years of his life, he could never get a single moment’s sleep.[1312] Antipater of Sidon, the poet, was attacked with fever every year, and that only on his birthday; he died of it at an advanced age.[1313]