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ON THE NATURAL FACULTIES Book I
[p. 49]ments of air and fluid throughout the whole body;
Nature acts throughout in an artistic and equitable manner, having certain faculties, by virtue of which each part of the body draws to itself the juice which is proper to it, and, having done so, attaches it to every portion of itself, and completely assimilates it; while such part of the juice as has not been mastered,
i.e. "Appropriated"; very nearly "assimilated."
and is not capable of undergoing complete alteration and being assimilated to the part which is being nourished, is got rid of by yet another (an expulsive) faculty.
PART 13
Now the extent of exactitude and truth in the doctrines of Hippocrates may be gauged, not merely from the way in which his opponents are at variance with obvious facts, but also from the various subjects of natural research themselves- the functions of animals, and the rest. For those people who do not believe that there exists in any part of the animal a faculty for attracting its own special quality
"Attractricem convenientis qualitatis vim" (Linacre). cf. p. 36, note 2.
are compelled repeatedly to deny obvious facts.
Lit. "obvious phenomena."
For instance, Asclepiades, the physician,
Asclepiades of Bithynia, who flourished in the first half of the first century B.C., was an adherent of the atomistic philosophy of Democritus, and is the typical representative of the Mechanistic school in Graeco-Roman medicine; he disbelieved in any principle of individuality ("nature") in teh organism, and his methods of tratment, in accordance with his pathology, were mechano-therapeutical. cf. p. 64, note 3.
did this in the case of the kidneys. That these are organs for secreting [separating out] the urine, was the belief not only of Hippocrates, Diocles,
