Ancient Medicine (11-15)

It is necessary to inquire into the cause why such symptoms come to these men. The one who had grown accustomed to one meal suffered, I think, because he did not wait sufficient time, until his digestive organs had completely digested and assimilated the food taken the day before, and until they had become empty and quiet, but had taken fresh

food while the organs were still in a state of hot turmoil and ferment. Such organs digest much more slowly than others, and need longer rest and quiet. The man accustomed to take lunch, since no fresh nourishment was given him as soon as his body needed nourishment, when the previous meal was digested and there was nothing to sustain him, naturally wastes and pines away through want. For I put down to want all the symptoms which I have said such a man shows. And I assert furthermore that all other men besides, who when in good health fast for two or three days, will show the same symptoms as I have said those exhibit who do not take their lunch.

Such constitutions, I contend, that rapidly and severely feel the effects of errors, are weaker than the others. A weak man is but one step removed from a sickly man, but a sickly man is weaker still, and is more apt to suffer distress whenever he misses the due season. And, while the art can admit of such nice exactness, it is difficult always to attain perfect accuracy. But many departments of medicine have reached such a pitch of exactness, and I will speak about them later. I declare, however, that we ought not to reject the ancient art as non-existent, or on the ground that its method of inquiry is faulty, just because it has not attained exactness in every detail, but much rather, because it has been able by reasoning to rise from deep ignorance to approximately perfect accuracy, I think we ought to admire the discoveries as the work, not of chance, but of inquiry rightly and correctly conducted.

But I want to return to the theory of those who prosecute their researches in the art after the novel fashion, building on a postulate. For if there be such a thing as heat, or cold, or dryness, or moistness, which injures a man, it necessarily follows that the scientific healer will counteract cold with hot, hot with cold, moist with dry and dry with moist. Now suppose we have a man whose constitution is not strong, but weaker than the average. Let this man’s food be wheat straight from the threshing-floor, unworked and uncooked, and raw meat, and let his drink be water. The use of this diet will assuredly cause him much severe suffering; he will experience pains and physical weakness, his digestion will be ruined and he will not be able to live long. Well, what remedy should be prepared for a man in this condition? Heat or cold or dryness or moistness? One of these, plainly; for, according to the theory of the new school, if the injury was caused by one of the opposites, the other opposite ought to be a specific. Of course the most obvious as well as the most reliable medicine would be to abandon his old diet, and to give him bread instead of wheat, boiled meat instead of raw meat, and besides these things, a little wine to drink. This change must restore him to his health, unless indeed it has been entirely ruined by long continuance of the diet. What then shall we say? That he was suffering from cold, and that the taking of these hot things benefited him? Or shall we say the opposite? I think that I have nonplussed my opponent. For is it the heat of the wheat, or the cold, or the dryness, or the moistness, that the baker took away from it? For a thing which has been

exposed to fire and to water, and has been made by many other things, each of which has its own individual property[*] and nature, has lost some of its qualities and has been mixed and combined with others.

Of course I know also that it makes a difference to a man’s body whether bread be of bolted or of unbolted flour, whether it be of winnowed or of unwinnowed wheat, whether it be kneaded with much water or with little, whether it be thoroughly kneaded or unkneaded, whether it be thoroughly baked or underbaked, and there are countless other differences. Barley-cake varies in just the same way. The properties[*] too of each variety are powerful, and no one is like to any other. But how could he who has not considered these truths, or who considers them without learning, know anything about human ailments? For each of these differences produces in a human being an effect and a change of one sort or another, and upon these differences is based all the dieting of a man, whether he be in health, recovering from an illness, or suffering from one. Accordingly there could surely be nothing more useful or more necessary to know than these things, and how the first discoverers, pursuing their inquiries excellently and with suitable application of reason to the nature of man, made their discoveries, and thought the art worthy to be ascribed to a god, as in fact is the usual belief. For they did not consider that the dry or the moist or the hot or the cold or anything else of the kind injures a man, or that he has need of any such thing, but they considered that it is the strength of each thing, that which, being too powerful for the human constitution, it cannot assimilate, which causes harm, and

this they sought to take away. The strongest part of the sweet is the sweetest, of the bitter the most bitter, of the acid the most acid, and each of all the component parts of man has its extreme. For these they saw are component parts of man, and that they are injurious to him; for there is in man salt and bitter, sweet and acid, astringent and insipid,[*] and a vast number of other things, possessing properties of all sorts, both in number and in strength. These, when mixed and compounded with one another are neither apparent nor do they hurt a man; but when one of them is separated off, and stands alone, then it is apparent and hurts a man. Moreover, of the foods that are unsuitable for us and hurt a man when taken, each one of them is either bitter, or salt, or acid, or something else uncompounded and strong, and for this reason we are disordered by them, just as we are by the secretions separated off in the body. But all things that a man eats or drinks are plainly altogether free from such an uncompounded and potent humour, e.g. bread, cake, and suchlike, which men are accustomed constantly to use in great quantity, except the highly seasoned delicacies which gratify his appetite and greed. And from such foods, when plentifully partaken of by a man, there arises no disorder at all or isolation of the powers[*] resident in the body, but strength, growth and nourishment in great measure arise from them, for no other reason except that they are well compounded, and have nothing undiluted and strong, but form a single, simple whole.

I am at a loss to understand how those who maintain the other view, and abandon the old method to rest the art on a postulate, treat their patients on the lines of their postulate. For they have not discovered, I think, an absolute hot or cold, dry or moist, that participates in no other form. But I think that they have at their disposal the same foods and the same drinks as we all use, and to one they add the attribute of being hot, to another, cold, to another, dry, to another, moist, since it would be futile to order a patient to take something hot, as he would at once ask, What hot thing? So that they must either talk nonsense or have recourse to one of these known substances. And if one hot thing happens to be astringent, and another hot thing insipid, and a third hot thing causes flatulence (for there are many various kinds of hot things, possessing many opposite powers), surely it will make a difference whether he administers the hot astringent thing, or the hot insipid thing, or that which is cold and astringent at the same time (for there is such a thing), or the cold insipid thing. For I am sure that each of these pairs produces exactly the opposite of that produced by the other, not only in a man, but in a leathern or wooden vessel, and in many other things less sensitive than man. For it is not the heat which possesses the great power, but the astringent and the insipid, and the other qualities I have mentioned, both in man and out of man, whether eaten or drunk, whether applied externally as ointment or as plaster.