Meaning of facies Hippocratica | Babel Free

Definitions

The pallid or shrunken face of someone about to die.

Examples

“Your child comes into the world with the symptoms of death; the facies Hippocratica forms the character of its physiognomy, and the prognostic of its fate.”

“Carew shifted his position, and once more looked anxiously at the haggard face on the pillow. It bore certain tokens which in his ignorance he fancied were characteristic of the facies hippocratica […].”

“Hippocratics prided themselves on their clinical acuity, being quick to pick up telltale symptoms, as with the facies hippocratica, the facial look of the dying: ‘a protrusive nose, hollow eyes, sunken temples, cold ears that are drawn in with the lobes turned outward, the forehead's skin rough and tense like parchment, and the whole face greenish or black or blue-grey or leaden’.”

CEFR level