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ON THE NATURAL FACULTIES Book I
PART 2
[p. 11]need to recognize the complete alteration of substance. In this way, nobody will suppose that bread represents a kind of meeting-place
A rallying-ground: lit. a place where two glens meet.
for bone, flesh, nerve, and all the other parts, and that each of these subsequently becomes separated in the body and goes to join its own kind;
Thus according to Gomperz (Greek Thinkers), the hypothesis of Anaxagoras was that "the bread. . .already contained the countless forms of matter as such which the human body displays. Their minuteness of size would withdraw them from our perception. For the defect or 'weakness' of the senses is the narrowness of their receptive area. These elusive particles are rendered visible and tangible by the process of nutrition, which combines them."
before any separation takes place, the whole of the bread obviously becomes blood; (at any rate, if a man takes no other food for a prolonged period, he will have blood enclosed in his veins all the same).
Therefore the blood must have come from the bread. The food from the alimentary canal was supposed by Galenn to be converted into blood in and by the portal veins. cf. p. 17.
And clearly this disproves the view of those who consider the elements
By "elements" is meant all homogenous, amorphous substances, such as metals, &c., as well as the elementary tissues>.
unchangeable, as also, for that matter, does the oil which is entirely used up in the flame of the lamp, or the faggots which, in a somewhat longer time, turn into fire.
I said, however, that I was not going to enter into an argument with these people, and it was only because the example was drawn from the subject-matter of medicine, and because I need it for the present treatise, that I have mentioned it. We shall then, as I said, renounce our controversy with them, since those who wish may get a good grasp of the views of the ancients from our own personal investigations into these matters.
The discussion which follows we shall devote entirely, as we originally proposed, to an enquiry into the number and character of the faculties of Nature, and what is the effect which each naturally