[p. 11]cold, nor the dry, nor the
moist, has ever been found unmixed with any other quality; but I suppose
they use the same articles of meat and drink as all we other men do.
But to this substance they give the attribute of being hot, to that
cold, to that dry, and to that moist. Since it would be absurd to
advise the patient to take something hot, for he would straightway
ask what it is? so that he must either play the fool, or have recourse
to some one of the well known substances; and if this hot thing happen
to be sour, and that hot thing insipid, and this hot thing has the
power of raising a disturbance in the body (and there are many other
kinds of heat, possessing many opposite powers), he will be obliged
to administer some one of them, either the hot and the sour, or the
hot and the insipid, or that which, at the same time, is cold and
sour (for there is such a substance), or the cold and the insipid.
For, as I think, the very opposite effects will result from either
of these, not only in man, but also in a bladder, a vessel of wood,
and in many other things possessed of far less sensibility than man;
for it is not the heat which is possessed of great efficacy, but the
sour and the insipid, and other qualities as described by me, both
in man and out of man, and that whether eaten or drunk, rubbed in
externally, and otherwise applied.
PART 16
But I think that of all the qualities heat and cold exercise the least
operation in the body, for these reasons: as long time as hot and
cold are mixed up with one another they do not give trouble, for the
cold is attempered and rendered more moderate by the hot, and the
hot by the cold; but when the one is wholly separate from the other,
then it gives pain; and at that season when cold is applied it creates
some pain to a man, but quickly, for that very reason, heat spontaneously
arises in him without requiring any aid or preparation. And these
things operate thus both upon men in health and in disease. For example,
if a person in health wishes to cool his body during winter, and bathes
either in cold water or in any other way, the more he does this, unless
his body be fairly congealed, when he resumes his clothes and comes
into a place of shelter, his body becomes more heated than before.
And thus, too, if a person wish to be warmed thoroughly either by
means of a hot bath or strong fire, and straight-
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