Ioannis Vuieri medicarum observationum rararum Liber I

heavy and continuous thoughts; also preceding fevers, and the intermission or suppression of due or customary evacuations, such as hemorrhoids, menstrual flows, and the like.

SIGNS.

Signs in the beginning of the disease: heaviness of the entire body, spontaneous thickness, a certain tightness of the precordium, weakness of the legs, and a slight rigor with little pain; a pruritic redness of the gums changed from the natural, and pain; the color of the face turning from pale to dusky. In the increment, a loose and bloody swelling of the gums, and rot with a stench of the mouth, of which sometimes the flesh is consumed down to the roots of the teeth, and the teeth wobble on both sides; in addition, blotches on the legs, showing a blood-like appearance when lightly touched, sometimes such as flea bites are wont to imprint, yet larger, which also sometimes appear sparsely on the thighs and the entire body, created from less thick blood; mostly also large, leaden, livid, purple spots, darker than black violets, born from the dregs of corrupt blood settling there; wherefore they rarely emerge in places other than the legs. Whenever these are seen, they announce most certainly that scurvy is present, even if other signs still lurk. Likewise, in the throat, that lividity sometimes appears in those in whom the entire body has been so soaked with this rot that the danger of death is almost not far away. As the disease worsens, rigidity of the sinews in the legs, inability to walk, contraction of the sinews as well, difficulty of breathing, especially