History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides

Thucydides. The history of the Peloponnesian War, Volume 1-2. Dale, Henry, translator. London: Heinemann and Henry G. Bohn, 1851-1852.

Moreover, the misery of restlessness and wakefulness continually oppressed them: The body did not waste away so long as the disease was at its height, but resisted it beyond all expectation: so that they either died in most cases on the ninth or the seventh day, through the internal burning, while they had still some degree of strength; or if they escaped [that stage of the disorder], then, after it had further descended into the bowels, and violent ulceration was produced in them, and intense diarrhaea had come on, the greater part were afterwards carried off through the weakness occasioned by it.

For the disease, which was originally seated in the head, beginning from above, passed throughout the whole body; and if any one survived its most fatal consequences, yet it marked him by laying hold of his extremities;