Hippocrates’ Epidemics, Book 1

...this has been recorded to happen in military camps, just as it occurs due to the nature of the site where everyone remains camped together in one place. At times, disease also happens because of certain pits called Charonian original Greek: "χαρονείων" (charoneiôn). These were caves or vents emitting toxic gases, named after Charon, the ferryman of the underworld. They were believed to poison the air and cause sudden illness., which release an abundance of vapors. Because these vapors infect the air, they generate diseases, and so they are included in the rule written above.

On the other hand, diseases caused by food and drink are both rare and very easy to recognize. Therefore, in the book On the Nature of Man, Hippocrates called the cause of what is common to many diseases the "most common" cause. But in the book On Airs, Waters, and Places, he called diseases that arise in this way "universal" universal: translated from "pankoinoi" (πάγκοινα), meaning diseases that affect an entire population or "all people" simultaneously, using these words: He shall predict the state of each passing season and the year, and what universal diseases will strike the city, whether in summer or in winter. And again, shortly after: These diseases are local to them, and if any universal disease should take hold due to the change of the seasons, they also share in this. And again, a few words later: For the men, these diseases are pec...