Nine books of physick and chirurgery written by that great and learned physitian, Dr Sennertus. The first five being his Institutions of the whole body of physick: the other four of fevers and agues: with their differences, signs, and cures.

CHAP. XI. Of Criticall daies.

WHereas the Crises are made more frequently and bet∣ter on certain determinate daies then other daies, * 1.1 those dales therefore are called criticall; but other daies wherein a Crisis seldome happens, or such a one as is not good does happen, are called not criticall.

Criticall daies are of three kinds, some are those which are simply, and according to preheminency called criticall, wherein Judgments are made better and more frequently, all which are bounded within the circuit of a septinary number, and are these, the 7.14.20.27.34.40. for daies are not taken whole, but shorter.

Moreover, there are some which are called indicant and contemplable, from whence the Crisis to come is shewn, and they are the middles, or quarternaries of every seventh morn∣ing, as 4.11.17.24.

Others are such as come between, * 1.2 which the Greeks call Parempiptontes, others call them provocatory, wherein from some accident contrary to nature, or by the violence of a fit, or by reason of some externall cause, nature is provoked to hasten to untimely expulsion, such are the 3.5.9.13.19. and according to some 15.18.

Vacant or not criticall daies are those wherein no crisis happens, * 1.3 or very seldome, and unperfect, and evill, such are the 6.8.10.12.16.18. to which some add 22, 23.25.29, 30.32, 33.35.38.39. which daies are also called medicinall, because the Physitian on those daies may safely administer purging Medicines.

After the 40. day diseases languish, and by a slow conco∣ction, and by Imposthumations, rather then Crisis are termi∣nated; after these some diseases are judged by months, o∣thers by years, and especially in climactericall years, when changes are made even of diseases which have been contra∣cted from their Mothers Womb.

From this doctrine neverthelesse of Hippocrates, and Ga∣len, which Galen reduceth, as it were, in brief, in the 1. of decretory diseases, cap. 5. the ancients now long since have de∣parted; Asclepiades, Archigenes, Celsus, and others, which accounted the third criticall year not the twentieth, but

the one and twentieth, the fourth, not the twenty seventh, but the twenty eighth.

The Astrologers also do not simply observe daies and num∣bers, * 1.4 but referring all the reason of criticall daies to the mo∣tion of the Moon, note those daies wherein the Moon comes to every quadrangle, or fourth corner, and comes to the dia∣meter in respect of place wherein she was found when the disease began, as now in the causes of criticall daies shall be shewn.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Criticall daies.
• * 1.2

  Interve∣ning.
• * 1.3

  Vacant.
• * 1.4

  The opini∣on of Astro∣logers.