Pletoricos

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Pletoricos plectoricus plenus repletus et cetera.


Apparatus:

Pletoricos ABC p | Plectoricos ms. e | Pletoridos f | Pletoricus j
pletoricus B | plectoricus AC ef {'ct' hypercorrect for 't'} | pl’etoricus p | om. j
et cetera add. AC


Translation:

Greek pletoricos, Latin plectoricus, means "full, bulky, packed" and "filled up", et cetera.


Commentary:

Pletoricos':
Greek πληθώρα /plēthṓra/ basically means "fullness; satiety", but in medicine it has the special sense "repletion of blood or humours". The adjective derived from it is πληθωρικός /plēthōrikós/ and its Latinised adoption plethoricus occurs in Galen, Oribasius and Cassius Felix, the latter mentioning three times a corpus plethoricum, i.e. "a body filled up with the natural humours", and always in connection with medical judgments, whether the patient is fit enough to be phlebotomized. Cf. his De medicina, ed. Fraisse (2001: 5-13), where it says e.g. on p. 6, § 4, chapter I Ad tardum sive inveteratum capitis dolorem ... {"On chronic and long-standing head-ache..."}: Curationis autem tempore oportet aegrotum ex brachio flebotomare, si tamen aetate iuvenis fuerit et secundum naturam corpus ostenderit sive multitudine suci plenum, quod Graeci plethoricum vocant - "But at the time of treatment the patient has to be bled from the arm, if he is young of age and according to the condition his body shows or whether his body is full with a great amount of humours, which the Greeks call plethoric".
This text is also available online in the Rose edition (1879: 3) [[1]].


WilfGunther 15/09/2013


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