PART 7
VII. So much for winds, healthy and unhealthy.
I wish now to treat of waters, those that bring
disease or very good health, and of the ill or good
that is likely to arise from water. For the influence
[p. 85]
of water upon health is very great. Such as are
marshy, standing and stagnant must in summer be
hot, thick and stinking, because there is no outflow ;
and as fresh rain-water is always flowing in and the
sun heats them, they must be of bad colour, unhealthy
and bilious. In winter they must be frosty,
cold and turbid through the snow and frosts, so as
to be very conducive to phlegm and sore throats.
Those who drink it have always large, stiff spleens,
and hard, thin, hot stomachs, while their shoulders,
collar-bones and faces are emaciated ; the fact is
that their flesh dissolves to feed the spleen, so that
they are lean. With such a constitution they eat
and drink heavily. Their digestive organs, upper
and lower, are very dry and very hot, so that they
need more powerful drugs. This malady is endemic
both in summer and in winter. In addition the
dropsies that occur are very numerous and very
fatal. For in the summer there are epidemics of
dysentery, diarrhoea and long quartan fever, which
diseases when prolonged cause constitutions such as
I have described to develop dropsies that result in
death. These are their maladies in summer. In
winter young people suffer from pneumonia and
illnesses attended by delirium, the older, through
the hardness of their digestive organs, from ardent
fever. Among the women occur swellings and leucophlegmasia ;
they conceive hardly and are delivered
with difficulty. The babies are big and swollen, and
[p. 87]
then, as they are nursed, they oecome emaciated
1
and miserable. The discharge after childbirth is
bad. Children are very subject to hernia and men
to enlarged veins and to ulcers on the legs, so that
such constitutions cannot be long-lived but must
grow prematurely old. Moreover, the women appear
to be with child, yet, when the time of delivery
comes, the fullness of the womb disappears, this
being caused by dropsy in that organ. Such waters
I hold to be absolutely bad. The next worst will be
those whose springs are from rocks--for they must
be hard--or from earth where there are hot waters,
or iron is to be found, or copper, or silver, or gold,
or sulphur, or alum, or bitumen, or soda. For all
these result from the violence of the heat. So from
such earth good waters cannot come, but hard, heating
waters, difficult to pass and causing constipation.
The best are those that flow from high places and
earthy hills. By themselves they are sweet and clear,
and the wine they can stand is but little. In winter
they are warm, in summer cold. They would naturally
be so, coming from very deep springs. I commend
especially those whose flow breaks forth towards the
rising--by preference the summer rising--of the
sun. For they must be brighter, sweet-smelling
and light ; while all that are salt, harsh and hard
are not good to drink, though there are some constitutions
and some diseases which are benefited by
drinking such waters, concerning which I will speak
[p. 89]
presently. Aspect affects spring waters thus. Those
whose sources face the risings of the sun are the
very best. Second in excellence come those between
the summer risings and the summer settings, by
preference in the direction of the risings. Third
best are those between the summer and winter
settings. The worst are those that face the south,
and those between the winter rising and setting.
These are very bad indeed when the winds are in the
south, less bad when they are in the north. Spring
waters should be used thus. A man in health and
strength can drink any water that is at hand without
distinction, but he who because of disease wishes
to drink the most suitable can best attain health in
the following way. Those whose digestive organs are
hard and easily heated will gain benefit from the
sweetest, lightest and most sparkling waters. But
those whose bellies are soft, moist, and phlegmatic,
benefit from the hardest, most harsh and saltish
waters, for these are the best to dry them up. For
waters that are best for cooking and most solvent
naturally loosen the digestive organs the most and
relax them ; but harsh waters, hard and very bad for
cooking, contract most these organs and dry them
up. In fact the public are mistaken about saline
waters through inexperience, in that they are
generally considered to be laxative. The truth is
that they are just the reverse ; they are harsh and
bad for cooking, so that the digestive organs too
are stiffened by them rather than loosened.
[p. 91]
