[p. 9]wheat, such as it is supplied
from the thrashing-floor, raw and unprepared, with raw meat, and let
him drink water. By using such a diet I know that he will suffer much
and severely, for he will experience pains, his body will become weak,
and his bowels deranged, and he will not subsist long. What remedy,
then, is to be provided for one so situated? Hot? or cold? or moist?
or dry? For it is clear that it must be one or other of these. For,
according to this principle, if it is one of the which is injuring
the patient, it is to be removed by its contrary. But the surest and
most obvious remedy is to change the diet which the person used, and
instead of wheat to give bread, and instead of raw flesh, boiled,
and to drink wine in addition to these; for by making these changes
it is impossible but that he must get better, unless completely disorganized
by time and diet. What, then, shall we say? whether that, as he suffered
from cold, these hot things being applied were of use to him, or the
contrary? I should think this question must prove a puzzler to whomsoever
it is put. For whether did he who prepared bread out of wheat remove
the hot, the cold, the moist, or the dry principle in it?- for the
bread is consigned both to fire and to water, and is wrought with
many things, each of which has its peculiar property and nature, some
of which it loses, and with others it is diluted and mixed.
PART 14
And this I know, moreover, that to the human body it makes a great
difference whether the bread be fine or coarse; of wheat with or without
the hull, whether mixed with much or little water, strongly wrought
or scarcely at all, baked or raw- and a multitude of similar differences;
and so, in like manner, with the cake (maza); the powers of each,
too, are great, and the one nowise like the other. Whoever pays no
attention to these things, or, paying attention, does not comprehend
them, how can he understand the diseases which befall a man? For,
by every one of these things, a man is affected and changed this way
or that, and the whole of his life is subjected to them, whether in
health, convalescence, or disease. Nothing else, then, can be more
important or more necessary to know than these things. So that the
first inventors, pursuing their investigations properly, and by a
suitable train of reasoning, according to the nature of
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