CHAP. 52. (51.)—DEATH.
And now to speak of the premonitory signs of death. Among these are laughter, in madness1 in cases of delirium,2 the patient carefully folding the fringe or the plaits of the bed- clothes;3 insensibility to the attempts of those who would rouse them from sleep; and involuntary discharges from the body, which it is not necessary here to particularize; but the most unequivocal signs of all, are certain appearances of the eyes and the nose, a lying posture with the face continually upwards, an irregular and feeble motion of the pulse,4 and the other symptoms, which have been observed by that prince of physicians, Hippocrates. At the same time that there are innumerable signs of death, there are none of health and safety; so much so, that Cato the Censor, when speaking to his son in relation to those who appear to be in good health, declared, as though it had been the enunciation of some oracle,5 that precocity in youth is a sign of an early death.6The number of diseases is infinite. Pherecydes of Scyros died from vast numbers of worms issuing from his body.7 Some persons are distressed by a perpetual fever; such was the case with C. Mæcenas; during the last three years of his life, he could never get a single moment's sleep.8 Antipater of Sidon, the poet, was attacked with fever every year, and that only on his birthday; he died of it at, an advanced age.9
