Such are the properties of rain waters, and of those from snow and ice. Stone, kidney disease, strangury and sciatica are very apt to attack people, and ruptures occur, when they drink water of very many different kinds, or from large rivers, into which other rivers flow, or from a lake fed by many streams of various sorts, and whenever they use foreign waters coming from a great, not a short, distance. For one water cannot be like another; some are sweet, others are impregnated with salt and alum, others flow from hot springs. These when mixed up together disagree, and the strongest always prevails. But the strongest is not always the same; sometimes it is one, sometimes another, according to the winds. One has its strength from a north wind, another from the south wind, and similarly with the others. Such waters then must leave a sediment of mud and sand in the vessels, and drinking them causes the diseases mentioned before. That there are exceptions I will proceed to set forth.

Those whose bowels are loose and healthy, whose bladder is not feverish, and the mouth of whose bladder is not over narrow, pass water easily, and no solid matter forms in their bladder. But feverishness of the bowels must be accompanied by feverishness of the bladder. For when it is abnormally heated its mouth is inflamed. In this condition it does not expel the urine, but concocts and heats it within itself. The finest part is separated off, and the clearest passes out as urine, while the thickest and muddiest part forms solid matter, which, though at first small, grows in course of time. For as it rolls about in the urine it coalesces with whatever solid matter forms, and so it grows and hardens. When the patient makes water, it is forced by the urine to fall against the mouth of the bladder, and staying the flow of the urine causes violent pain. So that boys that suffer from stone rub and pull at their privy parts, under the impression that there lies the cause of their making water.Coray’s emendation would mean, the cause of the stoppage, an attractive alteration. That my account is correct is shown by the fact that sufferers from stone emit urine that is very clear, as the thickest and muddiest part of it remains and solidifies. This in most cases is the cause of stone. Children get stone also from the milk, if it be unhealthy, too hot and bilious. For it heats the bowels and the bladder, so that the urine is heated and affected as I have described. And my opinion is that we should give to young children only very diluted wine, which heats and parches the veins less. Females suffer less from stone. For their urethra is short and broad, so that the urine is easily expelled. Nor do they rub the privy parts as do males, nor handle the urethra. For it opens directly into the privy parts, which is not so with males, nor is their urethra wide. And they drink more than boys do.

This, or something very like this, is the truth concerning these matters. As to the seasons, a consideration of the following points will make it possible to decide whether the year will prove unhealthy or healthy. If the signs prove normal when the stars set and rise; if there be rains in autumn, if the winter be moderate, neither too mild nor unseasonably cold, and if the rains be seasonable in spring and in summer, the year is likely to be very healthy. If, on the other hand, the winter prove dry and northerly, the spring rainy and southerly, the summer cannot fail to be feverladen, causing ophthalmia and dysenteries. For whenever the great heat comes on suddenly while the earth is soaked by reason of the spring rains and the south wind, the heat cannot fail to be doubled, coming from the hot, sodden earth and the burning sun; men’s bowels not being braced nor their brain dried—for when spring is such the body and its flesh must necessarily be flabby—the fevers that attack are of the acutest type in all cases, especially among the phlegmatic. Dysenteries are also likely to come upon women and the most humid constitutions. If at the rising of the Dog Star stormy rain occurs and the Etesian winds blow, there is hope that the distempers will cease and that the autumn will be healthy. Otherwise there is danger lest deaths occur among the women and children, and least of all among the old men; and lest those that get better lapse into quartans, and from quartans into dropsies. But if the winter be southerly, rainy and mild, and the spring be northerly, dry and wintry, in the first place women with child whose delivery is due by spring suffer abortion; and if they do bring forth, their children are weak and sickly, so that either they die at once, or live puny, weak and sickly. Such is the fate of the women. The others have dysenteries and dry ophthalmia, and in some cases catarrhs descend from the head to the lungs. Phlegmatics are liable to dysenteries, and women also, phlegm running down from the brain because of the humidity of their constitution. The bilious have dry ophthalmia because of the warm dryness of their flesh. Old men have catarrhs because of their flabbiness and the wasting of their veins, so that some die suddenly, while others become paralyzed on the right side or the left. For whenever, owing to the winter being southerly and the body warm, neither brain nor veins are hardened, a northerly, dry, cold spring supervening, the brain, just at the time when it ought to have been relaxed along with spring and purged by cold in the head and hoarseness, congeals and hardens, so that the heat of summer having suddenly supervened and the change supervening, these diseases befall. Such cities as are well situated with regard to sun and winds, and use good waters, are less affected by such changes; but if they use marshy or standing waters, and are not well situated with regard to winds and sun, they are more affected. If the summer prove dry, the diseases cease more quickly; if it be rainy, they are protracted. Sores are apt to fester from the slightest cause. Lienteries and dropsies supervene on the conclusion of the diseases, as the bowels do not readily dry up. If the summer and the autumn be rainy and southerly, the winter must be unhealthy; phlegmatics and men over forty are likely to suffer from ardent fevers, bilious people from pleurisy and pneumonia. If the summer prove dry and northerly, and the autumn rainy and southerly, it is likely that in winter headaches occur and mortifications of the brain,See Littré V. 581 foll. and in addition hoarseness, colds in the head, coughs, and in some cases consumption as well. But if the weather be northerly and dry, with no rain either during the Dog Star or at Arcturus, it is very beneficial to those who have a phlegmatic or humid constitution, and to women, but it is very harmful to the bilious. For these dry up overmuch, and are attacked by dry ophthalmia and by acute, protracted fevers, in some cases too by melancholies. For the most humid and watery part of the bile is dried up and is spent, while the thickest and most acrid part is left, and similarly with the blood. Consequently these diseases come upon them. But all these conditions are helpful to the phlegmatic, for they dry up and reach winter dried up and not flabby.

By studying and observing after this fashion one may foresee most of the consequences of the changes. One should be especially on one’s guard against the most violent changes of the seasons, and unless compelled one should neither purge, nor apply cautery or knife to the bowels, before at least ten days are past. The following are the four most violent changes and the most dangerous:—both solstices, especially the summer solstice, both the equinoxes, so reckoned, especially the autumnal. One must also guard against the risings of the stars, especially of the Dog Star, then of Arcturus, and also of the setting of the Pleiades. For it is especially at these times that diseases come to a crisis. Some prove fatal, some come to an end, all others change to another form and another constitution.

So much for the changes of the seasons. Now I intend to compare AsiaThat is, Asia Minor. and Europe, and to show how they differ in every respect, and how the nations of the one differ entirely in physique from those of the other. It would take too long to describe them all, so I will set forth my views about the most important and the greatest differences. I hold that Asia differs very widely from Europe in the nature of all its inhabitants and of all its vegetation. For everything in Asia grows to far greater beauty and size; the one region is less wild than the other, the character of the inhabitants is milder and more gentle. The cause of this is the temperate climate, because it lies towards the east midway between the risingsThat is, the winter rising and the summer rising. of the sun, and farther away than is Europe from the cold. Growth and freedom from wildness are most fostered when nothing is forcibly predominant, but equality in every respect prevails. Asia, however, is not everywhere uniform; the region, however, situated midway between the heat and the cold is very fruitful, very wooded and very mild; it has splendid water, whether from rain or from springs. While it is not burnt up with the heat nor dried up by drought and want of water, it is not oppressed with cold, nor yet damp and wet with excessive rains and snow. Here the harvests are likely to be plentiful, both those from seed and those which the earth bestows of her own accord, the fruit of which men use, turning wild to cultivated and transplanting them to a suitable soil. The cattle too reared there are likely to flourish, and especially to bring forth the sturdiest young and rear them to be very fine creatures.Or, if πυκνότατα and κάλλιδτα be adverbs, they are very prolific and the best of mothers. The men will be well nourished, of very fine physique and very tall, differing from one another but little either in physique or stature. This region, both in character and in the mildness of its seasons, might fairly be said to bear a close resemblance to spring Courage, endurance, industry and high spirit could not arise in such conditions either among the natives or among immigrants,The writer is thinking of Asiatic natives and the Greek colonists on the coast of Asia Minor. but pleasure must be supreme . . .There is a gap in the text here dealing with the Egyptians and Libyans. wherefore in the beasts they are of many shapes.