PART 19
XIX. Again, such discharges as settle in the eyes,
possessing powerful, acrid humours of all sorts, ulcerate
the eyelids, and in some cases eat into the parts on to
which they run, the cheeks and under the eyes ; and
they rupture and eat through the covering of the
eyeball. But pains, burning and intense inflammation
prevail until the discharges are concocted and
become thicker, so that rheum is formed from them.
This coction is the result of mixture, compounding
and digestion. Secondly, the discharges that settle
in the throat, giving rise to soreness, angina,
erysipelas and pneumonia, all these at first emit salt,
watery and acrid humours, whereby the diseases are
strengthened. But when they become thicker and
more matured, and throw off all trace of their acridness,
then the fevers too subside with the other symptoms
that distress the patient. We must surely consider
the cause of each complaint to be those things the
presence of which of necessity produces a complaint
of a specific kind, which ceases when they change
into another combination. All conditions, then,
resulting from heat or cold pure and simple, with no
other power
1 as a factor, must cease when heat
changes into cold or cold into heat. This change
takes place in the manner I have described above.
Moreover, all other complaints to which man is liable
arise from powers.
2 Thus, when there is an out-pouring
of the bitter principle, which we call yellow
[p. 51]
bile, great nausea, burning and weakness prevail.
When the patient gets rid of it, sometimes by purgation,
either spontaneous or by medicine, if the
purging be seasonable he manifestly gets rid both
of the pains and of the heat. But so long as these
bitter particles are undissolved, undigested and uncompounded,
by no possible means can the pains and
fevers be stayed. And those who are attacked by
pungent and acrid acids suffer greatly from frenzy,
from gnawings of the bowels and chest, and from
restlessness.
3 No relief from these symptoms is
secured until the acidity is purged away, or calmed
down and mixed with the other humours. But
coction, alteration, thinning or thickening into the
form of humours through other forms of all sorts
(wherefrom crises also and fixing their periods derive
great importance in cases of illness)--to all
these things surely heat and cold are not in the least
liable. For neither could either ferment or thicken.
†For what shall we call it? Combinations of humours
that exhibit a power
4 that varies with the various
factors.
5† Since the hot will give up its heat only
when mixed with the cold, and the cold can be
[p. 53]
neutralized only by the hot. But all other components
of man become milder and better the
greater the number of other components with which
they are mixed. A man is in the best possible
condition when there is complete coction and rest,
with no particular power
6 displayed. About this I
think that I have given a full explanation.