“What in the world is this disease which has attacked my breathing? for I should like to take a deep, full breath and get rid of this trouble worrying my heart. I have tried to do it repeatedly, but cannot manage to lift even a particle of the weight that is oppressing me. For the rest it is as if a very heavy stone were lying on my heart which cuts my breathing when I sigh, and I cannot understand the reason of it nor what has brought this suffering upon me. And I will tell you something else too, dearest soul, partner of my afflictions and thoughts, a fit of gaping often attacks me and when I am inhaling my breath gets caught and causes me very great pain. If you know what this new illness of mine is, please speak out.”
When the Empress listened to him and heard what he suffered she seemed to be suffering from the same disease herself and her breathing too was caught by asthma, so deeply affected was she by the Emperor’s words. She frequently sent for the more skilled physicians and compelled them to enquire closely into the nature of the disease, and asked to be taught the immediate and the indirect cause of it. They placed their hands on his arteries and acknowledged that they found in every movement of the arteries proof of multifold irregularities, but they were quite unable to discover the cause.
Consequently they referred his difficulty
They knew too that the Emperor’s diet was not rich, but exceedingly moderate and plain like that of athletes and soldiers and such as to prevent the rise of humours due to too rich a diet. Consequently they referred his difficulty in breathing to some other cause, and said that the immediate cause of his illness was nothing but his intense application to business and his continual and numerous worries, by which his heart got inflamed, and drew all that was superfluous out of the rest of the body. After this the dreadful disease which had seized the Emperor gave him no respite whatever, but throttled him like a noose.
And the disease made so much progress daily that it no longer came on at intervals, but continuously and incessantly, and the Emperor was unable to lie on either side and had not the strength to draw a breath without making a violent effort. Then every physician was summoned and the Emperor’s illness was the subject of their discussion. Theyweredivided in their opinions and at discord, and each one diagnosed it differently and tried to apply the treatment according with his diagnosis.
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