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OF ARETÆUS, THE CAPPADOCIAN, ON THE CAUSES AND SYMPTOMS OF CHRONIC DISEASE
BOOK I.
CHAPTER IX.
[p. 349]
the heart is placed in the middle of the lungs, and this intermediate
space comprehends the stomach; and, moreover, both
are connected with the spine; and from this vicinity to the
heart arise the heart-ache, prostration of strength, and symptoms
of melancholy.
There are other, and, indeed, innumerable causes of this
disease; but the principal is, much pus poured forth by the
belly through the stomach. It is familiar to such persons as
from their necessities live on a slender and hard diet; and to
those who, for the sake of education, are laborious and persevering;
whose portion is the love of divine science, along
with scanty food, want of sleep, and the meditation on wise
sayings and doings--whose is the contempt of a full and
multifarious diet; to whom hunger is for food, water for
drink, and watchfulness in place of rest; to whom in place of
a soft couch, is a hammock on the ground without bed-clothes,
a mean coverlet, a porous mantle, and the only cover to whose
head is the common air; whose wealth consists in the abundant
possession and use of divine thought (for all these things they
account good from love of learning); and, if they take any
food, it is of the most frugal description, and not to gratify
the palate, but solely to preserve life; no quaffing of wine to
intoxication; no recreation; no roving or jaunting about; no
bodily exercise nor plumpness of flesh; for what is there from
which the love of learning will not allure one?--from country,
parents, brothers, oneself, even unto death. Hence, to them,
emaciation of the frame; they are ill-complexioned; even
in youth they appear old, and dotards in understanding; in
mind cheerless and inflexible; depraved appetite, speedy satiety
of the accustomed slender and ordinary food, and from want
of familiarity with a varied diet, a loathing of all savoury
viands; for if they take any unusual article of food, they are
injured thereby, and straightway abominate food of all kinds.
It is a chronic disease of the stomach. But inflammations,
