Before jumping into splitting, I’d suggest reviewing Christian’s advice (he’s the one who should know):
The words reported by @fantabulosa are within the range. The number of items … I don’t think that’s been posted yet.
I mention this, because there might be something else going on with the content (e.g., a poorly built or poorly OCRd PDF), and going through the effort to split the database might not bring @fantabulosa the desired relief. For example: a 30-second hang was reported. Hang while doing what? Hang on every document? What happens when the hung document is removed temporarily from the database? Has Verify & Repair and/or Rebuild been run? Disk permissions check out ok?