Book 3 — Chapter VII

Chapter VII

Interaction between two bodies; the stronger masters the weaker; a deleterious drug masters the forces of the body, whereas food is mastered by them; this mastery is an alteration, and the amount of alteration varies with the different organs; thus a partial alteration is effected in mouth by saliva, but much greater in stomach, where not only gastric juice, but also bile, pneuma, innate heat (i.e. oxidation?), and other powerful factors are brought to bear on it; need of considerable alteration in stomach as a transition-stage between food and blood; appearance of faeces in intestine another proof of great alteration effected in stomach. Asclepiades’s denial of real qualitative change in stomach rebutted. Erasistratus’s denial that digestion in any way resembles a boiling process comes from his taking words too literally.