in Medicine, otherwise called stertor, is a sound like that of the cerebrum, but greater and more manifest.

Many confound those affections, and make them to differ only in place and magnitude, calling by the name of stertor 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 aspera arteria, they call cerebrum; but if the sound comes from the aspera arteria itself, it is called cerebrum, that is, as some understand it, a rattling, or as others a stridulous or wheezing roughness of the aspera arteria. In dying persons this affection is called by the Greeks ἀγγεῖον, rhenechos, which is a snoring or rattling kind of noise, proceeding as it were from a conflict between the breath and the humours in the aspera 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 aspera arteria from a plenitude of humour." Expectoration is suppressed either by the viscidity of the humour, which requires to be discharged, and which adhering to the aspera arteria, and being there agitated by the breath, excites that bubbling noise or stertor; or by an obstruction of the bronchia; or, lastly, by a compression of the aspera 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 stertorous. 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 rhenechos 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, SNO

Sno, throat, is not always mortal, but only when nature is oppressed 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 aspera arteria) is very much obstructed, upon which account many dying persons labour under a stertor with their mouths gaping.