Galen: On the Natural Faculties by Galen
Chapter VIII
267 words | Chapter 29
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.
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