CRISIS, in Medicine, is used in different senses, both by the ancient and modern physicians. With some it means frequently no more than the excretion of any noxious substance from the body. Others take the word for a secretion of the noxious humours made in a fever. Others use it for the critical motion itself; and Galen defines a crisis in fevers, a sudden and instantaneous change, either for the better or the worse, productive of recovery or death.
CRISPIN and CRISPANUS, two legendary saints, whose festival, as marked in the calendar, is on the 25th of October. According to the legend, they were brethren, born at Rome; from whence they travelled to Soissons in France, about the year 303, to propagate the Christian religion; and because they would not be chargeable to others for their maintenance, they exercised the trade of shoemakers: but the governor of the town discovering them to be Christians, ordered them to be beheaded. From which time the shoemakers made choice of them for their tutelary saints.