CRISIS (Gr. a judgment, from krino, I judge), a name used by the ancient physicians to denote the rapid or sudden determination of an acute disease in the direction of con valescence or of death. It was opposed in signification to lysis (luo, I relax). which denoted the gradual subsidence of the symptoms noticed in most chronic and in some acute diseases. The doctrine of crises was closely bound up with that of a materiel morbi, or material of disease in the blood, which was presumed to be undergoing changes, during the whole course of the malady, tending loan evacuation of some kind. from the system in the form of a critical discharge (apostasis or abscess), which, when observed, was supposed to contain the matter of disease in a state of maim, and to be the direct cause of the sudden relief of the patient. Thus, according to the character and seat of the critical discharge, it was common to speak of a C. by sweating, by diarrhea, by expectoration, by urine, by parotid swellings, etc.; and no C. was considered regular
that was not attended by some symptom of this kind. Another curious doctrine asso ciated with that of crises, was the belief in certain days as ruling the beneficent or injurious. the complete or incomplete character of a crisis. The seventh, fourteenth, and twentieth (according to some, the twenty-first) days of the disease were regarded as eminently critical; less so, but still favorably critical, were the third, fifth, eleventh, seventeenth ; the fourth day was the indicator of a complete C. on the seventh; the sixth day was the tyrant, notorious for unfavorable crises; the sccord, eighth, tenth, thirteenth, and the rest were non-critical. Few physicians now attach much importance to critical clays, but the doctrine of crises and of a materiel morbi is still taught, with various modifications, in our medical schools and text-books.