Book II PESTILENT FEVERS 79

the soul of Galen seems to have migrated,—wrote in support
of Galen's theories, at length, and with great acuteness; that
is, so far as I have been able to judge from certain written
records taken down as notes by his pupils at the time
when he was Professor of Medicine at the School at Padua.
TThese notes were printed, and by chance came into my hands
at the very time when I myself was writing about these fevers,
and they made me hesitate about my own work, since, as it
happened, I was pursuing a very different line of investigation.
For even if I had had the will to persist in my enterprise, I was
confronted not only by the fear whether I ought to trust my—
self to deviate from the path taken by those others; but also it
seemed to me a very presumptuous thing to dare to differ from
both Galen the First and Galen the Second. Accordingly,
though I had almost decided to withdraw all that I had written
on the subject, still I communicated the case to some friends;
they gave me their frank advice, and persuaded me that what
I had already written, even though the path I took seemed to
be novel, nevertheless ought to be published, not indeed in the
form of an assertion, but rather as a set of problems. Now
what our Montanus says about the theories of Galen is ap—
proximately as follows

*Hevers", he says, "which are called pestlferous, differ in the
following respect from other fevers that consist in putrefaction.
The putrefaction of pestilent fevers is situated either in the
substance of the heart itself or in its contents, whereas in other
fevers neither the substance nor the contents of the heart are
putrefied.  Putrid vapors, it is true, are in the latter case trans—
mitted to the heart and inflame both the heart and its contents,
but they do not cause them to putrefy. However, if they do
reach the point of causing putrefaction, the fever is then pesti—
lent; further, every pestilent fever is also a hectic fever':;
since, when putrefaction has occurred, either in the heart or its
contents, it follows that it is already established. 'This ac—
ecounts for the symptoms of pestiferous fevers; the patient, I
mean to say, does not feel that he has fever; the pulse is not
violent or accelerated, yet a majority of the patients die. Pesti—
lent fevers correspond in part with putrid, in part with hectic
fevers; with putrid fevers because these depend entirely on
putridity; with hectic fevers, because the fever has already been
established; but these fevers must not be called simply hectic