[p. 49]
where acrid and unmixed humours come into play,
I am confident that the cause is the same, and that
restoration results from coction and mixture.
PART 19
XIX. Again, such discharges as settle in the eyes,
possessing powerful, acrid humours of all sorts, ulcerate
the eyelids, and in some cases eat into the parts on to
which they run, the cheeks and under the eyes ; and
they rupture and eat through the covering of the
eyeball. But pains, burning and intense inflammation
prevail until the discharges are concocted and
become thicker, so that rheum is formed from them.
This coction is the result of mixture, compounding
and digestion. Secondly, the discharges that settle
in the throat, giving rise to soreness, angina,
erysipelas and pneumonia, all these at first emit salt,
watery and acrid humours, whereby the diseases are
strengthened. But when they become thicker and
more matured, and throw off all trace of their acridness,
then the fevers too subside with the other symptoms
that distress the patient. We must surely consider
the cause of each complaint to be those things the
presence of which of necessity produces a complaint
of a specific kind, which ceases when they change
into another combination. All conditions, then,
resulting from heat or cold pure and simple, with no
other power as a factor, must cease when heat
changes into cold or cold into heat. This change
takes place in the manner I have described above.
Moreover, all other complaints to which man is liable
arise from powers. Thus, when there is an out-pouring
of the bitter principle, which we call yellow
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