in medicine, otherwise called flertor, is a sound like that of the cenchron, but greater and more manifest.

Many confound these affections, and make them to differ only in place and magnitude, calling by the name of flertor that sound or noise which is heard or supposed to be made in the passage between the palate and the nostrils as in those who sleep; that boiling or bubbling noise, which in respiration proceeds from the larynx, or head, or orifice of the alpina arteria, they call cerchon; but if the sound comes from the alpina arteria itself, they will have it called cerchon, that is, as some understand it, a rattling, or as others a shrill or whizzing roughness of the alpina arteria. In dying persons this affection is called by the Greeks ἀποξεις, rhenchos, which is a snoring or rattling kind of noise, proceeding as it were from a conflict between the breath and the humours in the alpina arteria.

This and such like affections are owing to a weakness of nature, as when the lungs are full of pus or humours: to which purpose we read in the Prognostics of Hippocrates, "it is a bad sign when there is no expectoration, and no discharge from the lungs, but a noise as from an ebullition is heard in the alpina arteria from a plenitude of humour." Expectoration is suppressed either by the vicissitude of the humour, which requires to be discharged, and which adhering to the alpina arteria, and being there agitated by the breath, excites that bubbling noise or flertor; or by an obstruction of the bronchia; or, lastly, by a compression of the alpina arteria and throat, whence the passage is straitened, in which the humours being agitated, excite such a kind of noise as before described. Hence Galen calls those who are strait-breasted flertorous. That author assigns but two causes of this symptom, which are either the straitness of the passage of respiration or redundancy of humours, or both together; but it is necessary to add a third, to wit, the weakness of the faculty, which is the cause of the rhenchos in dying persons, where nature is too weak to make discharges.

From what has been said we conclude, that this symptom, or this sort of fervour or ebullition in the throat, is not always mortal, but only when nature is opprest with the redundancy of humour, in such a manner, that the lungs cannot discharge themselves by spitting; or the passage appointed for the breath (being the alpina arteria) is very much obstructed, upon which account account many dying persons labour under a fever with their mouths gaping.