CRISIS (Lat.. from Gk. splalc, krisis, decision, from spivetr, krincin, Lat. ecrncre, to decide). A name used by the older physicians to denote the rapid or sudden determination of an acute disease in the direction of convalescence or of death. It is opposed in signification to lysis (fuo, I relax), which denotes the gradual subsidence of the symptoms and improvement in condition in most chronic and in some acute diseases. The doctrine of crises was closely bound up with that of a materics morbi, or material of disease, in the blood, which was presumed to be undergoing changes, during the whole course of the malady, tending to an evacuation of some kind from the system in the form of a critical discharge (apo stasis or abscess). which, when observed, was supposed to contain the matter of disease in a state of coct ion, 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 crisis by sweating, by diarrhea, by expectoration, by urine, by paro tid swellings, etc.; and no crisis was considered
regular that was not attended by some symptom of this kind. Another curious doctrine associated 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, and seven teenth; the fourth day was the indicator of a complete crisis on the seventh; the sixth day was the tyrant, notorious for unfavorable crises: the second, eighth, tenth, thirteenth, and the rest were non-critical. Few physicians now use the term, except in periodic diseases such as malaria, or in diseases which run a certain course, such as typhoid fever.