Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.49.3 · 2.49.3
Sneezing, cough, vomiting of bile
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ἔπειτα ἐξ αὐτῶν πταρμὸς καὶ βράγχος ἐπεγίγνετο, καὶ ἐν οὐ πολλῷ χρόνῳ κατέβαινεν ἐς τὰ στήθη ὁ πόνος μετὰ βηχὸς ἰσχυροῦ· καὶ ὁπότε ἐς τὴν καρδίαν στηρίξειεν, ἀνέστρεφέ τε αὐτὴν καὶ ἀποκαθάρσεις χολῆς πᾶσαι ὅσαι ὑπὸ ἰατρῶν ὠνομασμέναι εἰσὶν ἐπῇσαν, καὶ αὗται μετὰ ταλαιπωρίας μεγάλης.
Next, sneezing and hoarseness followed from these, and before long the pain came down into the chest, with a violent cough. When it settled in the stomach it upset it, and there came discharges of bile of every kind that doctors have named, and these came with great distress.
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The setting
After the first signs come sneezing and hoarseness, then pain and a violent cough in the chest, and when it settles in the stomach, every kind of bile the doctors have named.
A note on this passage
The symptoms arrive in a fixed order, marked by epeita, "then," and by the verb epegigneto, "came on afterward." Ptarmos is sneezing and branchos is hoarseness, and ou pollōi chronōi, "in not much time," says the pain katebainen, "came down," into the stēthē, the chest, with a strong bēx, a cough. The word ponos usually means toil or hardship and here means pain, so one ordinary Greek word stretches from effort to suffering.
Where the pain "settled" (stērixeien, "fixed itself") Thucydides writes kardia, which is the Greek word for the heart. In the context of what follows, the stomach is meant, since it is that organ the sickness turns over (anestrephe). He then borrows the professionals' own list: apokatharseis cholēs pasai hosai hypo iatrōn ōnomasmenai eisin, "all the discharges of bile that have been named by doctors." The phrase meta talaipōrias megalēs, "with great distress," comes last and covers all of them.
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