PEDIATRICS Vol. 53 No. 6 June 1974, pp. 876
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Some Pediatric Aphorisms From Hippocrates

T. E. C. Jr. M.D.

Hippocrates, generaly regarded as the "Father of Medicine," was probably born in 480 B.C. on the Island of Cos. Some of his aphorisms of interest to pediatricians are these:

Old persons endure fasting most easily; next, adults; young persons not nearly so well; and most especially infants, of them such as are of a particularly lively spirit.

A humid regimen is bifitting in all febrile diseases, and particularly in children, and others accustomed to live on such a diet.

Epilepsy in young persons is most frequently removed by changes of air, of country, and of modes of life.

With regard to the seasons, in spring and in the commencement of summer, children and those next to them in age are most comfortable, and enjoy best health; in summer and during a certain portion of autumn, old people; during the remainder of the autumn and in winter, those of the intermediate ages.

In the different ages the following complaints occur: to little and newborn children, aphthae, vomiting, coughs, sleeplessness, frights, inflammation of the navel, watery discharges from the ears.

At the approach of dentition, pruritus of the gums, fevers, convulsions, diarrhea, especially when cutting canine teeth, and in those who are particularly fat, and have constipated bowels.

To persons somewhat older, affections of the tonsils, incurvation of the spine at the vertebra next the occiput, asthma, calculus, round worms, ascarides, acrochordon, satyriasmus, struma, and other tubercles (phymata), but especially the aforesaid.

If in a person affected with fever, without any swelling in the fauces, be seized with a sense of suffocation suddenly, it is a mortal symptom.