Book 2 — Chapter VIII

Chapter VIII

Erasistratus’s disregard for the humours. In respect to excessive formation of bile, however, prevention is better than cure: accordingly we must consider its pathology. Does blood pre-exist in the food, or does it come into existence in the body? Erasistratus’s purely anatomical explanation of dropsy. He entirely avoids the question of the four qualities (e.g. the importance of innate heat) in the generation of the humours, etc. Yet the problem of blood-production is no less important than that of gastric digestion. Proof that bile does not pre-exist in the food. The four fundamental qualities of Hippocrates and Aristotle. How the humours are formed from food taken into the veins: when heat is in proportionate amount, blood results; when in excess, bile; when deficient, phlegm. Various conditions determining cold or warm temperaments. The four primary diseases result each from excess of one of the four qualities. Erasistratus unwillingly acknowledges this when he ascribes the indigestion occurring in fever to impaired function of the stomach. For what causes this functio laesa? Proof that it is the fever (excess of innate heat). If, then, heat plays so important a part in abnormal functioning, so must it also in normal (i.e. causes of eucrasia involved in those of dyscrasia, of physiology in those of pathology). A like argument explains the genesis of the humours. Addition of warmth to things already warm makes them bitter; thus honey turns to bile in people who are already warm; where warmth deficient, as in old people, it turns to useful blood. This is a proof that bile does not pre-exist, as such, in the food.