DBook II CUTANEOUS INFECTION$S 177

but mixed with thin pituita, and also putrefies, then it generates
the kind of herpes called 'miliary', from the Greek kenkhrias,
because the pustules are like grains of millet.

"These, then, are the forms of herpes, which Celsus7? ealls
(gacred fire'.  It is not true, as some claim, that by sacred fire
he means erysipelas; for he discusses sacered fire and erysipelas
separately.

When blood has spread under the skin, it sometimes causes
pustulent abscesses, at times even larger than those that occur
in erysipelas, and these are ealled phlegmons. 'They become
red, and are accompanied by heat, pain and also fever in most
cases. 'The blood may be pure or mixed, which latter is mostly
the case. When pure, the phlegmon is called simply phlegmon,
but when the blood is mixed the name of the humor that is
mixed with the blood is added. For instance, when the blood
has bile in it, the phlegmon is called jerysipelatous'; when it
has pituita, 'oedematous'; when black bile, *scirrhodic'; in these
phlegmons the humor that predominates is always blood. There
are three species of phlegmon, dothien, phyma, and phygethlon.3?
Dothien is what we call furuncle!, namely an abscess which
comes to a head, accompanied by inflammation, redness and
pain, and in this case there is some admixture of bile. Phyma
is very like furuncle, but flatter and rounder; the vulgar call it
'carbo', but incorrectly, for it is very different from what is pro—
perly called a carbuncle. A phyma is caused by blood slightly
parched, and thicker than that which causes a furuncle. Phy—
gethlon is what we Italians call 'panus',5' because it looks like a
panus, but others call it bubo', though some use the term 'bubo'
when it developes in the looser, fleshy parts and call it phygeth—
lon when it developes in the more muscular parts. / A phygethlon
developes from blood that is unmixed, or has in it thin pituita.
When the blood is at the same time inflamed and putrescent,
it produces the buboes of the plague, which Avicenna calls
'Althoin'.ö*? — But when the blood is very subtile and flows and
spreads under the epidermis, it causes pustulent abscesses.
When it is not in an inflamed condition, but is still heated so
that it, so to speak, boils, it causes what are called 'exanthemata?.
Pliny calls these 'eruptions of pimples' (papulae), and they are
vulgarly called 'suffersurae'*3 (heat blotches), I suppose because
of their fervid heat. They are pustules which are barely raised
above the skin, are red, and run into one another, and they