The Natural Faculties

The attraction is done by magnetism.

Anadosis begins with the squeezing action of the stomach.234 Then it uses:

• the peristalsis and propulsive action of the veins
• the traction exerted by the parts undergoing nourishment

This is why we can abandon the principle of replacement of evacuated matter.

This also avoids the contradiction of Asclepiades235 though we cannot refute it.

This is because the disjunctive argument used for demonstration is disjunctive of 3 alternatives.

One of the 2 propositions assumed in constructing our proof is false if the disjunction is a disjunction of 2 alternatives.

• If it is a disjunctive of 3 alternatives, no conclusion will be arrived at.

Chapter 8

Erasistratus would not have been ignorant of this if he had read about the Peripatetics.

Nor, similarly, should he have been unacquainted with the genesis of the humours, about which, not having even anything moderately plausible to say, he thinks to deceive us by the excuse that the consideration of such matters is not the least useful.

Then, in Heaven’s name, is it useful to know how food is digested in the stomach, but unnecessary to know how bile comes into existence in the veins?

Are we to pay attention merely to the evacuation of this humour, and not to its genesis? As though it were not far better to prevent its excessive development from the beginning than to give ourselves all the trouble of expelling it!236

And it is a strange thing to be entirely unaware as to whether its genesis is to be looked on as taking place in the body, or whether it comes from without and is contained in the food.

For, if it was right to raise this problem, why should we not make investigations concerning the blood as well—whether it takes its origin in the body, or is distributed through the food as is maintained by those who postulate homœmeries?237

Assuredly it would be much more useful to investigate what kinds of food are suited, and what kinds unsuited, to the process of blood-production238 rather than to enquire into what articles of diet are easily mastered by the activity of the stomach, and what resist and contend with it.

For the choice of the latter bears reference merely to digestion, while that of the former is of importance in regard to the generation of useful blood. For it is not equally important whether the aliment be imperfectly chylified239 in the stomach or whether it fail to be turned into useful blood.

Why is Erasistratus not ashamed to distinguish all the various kinds of digestive failure and all the occasions which give rise to them, whilst in reference to the errors of blood-production he does not utter a single word—nay, not a syllable?

The veins have both thick and thin blood.

In some people it is redder, in others yellower, in some blacker, in others more of the nature of phlegm.

It may smell offensively in many different respects.

It is extremely careless to suppose that:

• the blood is prevented from going forward into the liver due to the narrowness of the passages
• dropsy can never occur in any other way.

For, to imagine that dropsy is never caused by the spleen240 or any other part, but always by induration of the liver,241 is the standpoint of a man whose intelligence is perfectly torpid and who is quite out of touch with things that happen every day.

For, not merely once or twice, but frequently, we have observed dropsy produced by chronic haemorrhoids which have been suppressed,242 or which, through immoderate bleeding, have given the patient a severe chill; similarly, in women, the complete disappearance of the monthly discharge,243 or an undue evacuation such as is caused by violent bleeding from the womb, often provoke dropsy; and in some of them the so-called female flux ends in this disorder.

I leave out of account the dropsy which begins in the flanks or in any other susceptible part; this clearly confutes Erasistratus’s assumption, although not so obviously as does that kind of dropsy which is brought about by an excessive chilling of the whole constitution;

This, which is the primary reason for the occurrence of dropsy, results from a failure of blood-production,244 very much like the diarrhoea which follows imperfect digestion of food; certainly in this kind of dropsy neither the liver nor any other viscus becomes indurated.

Erasistratus despises what Hippocrates, Diocles, Praxagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus and Philistion245 did not despise.

Erasistratus is thoroughly small-minded and petty to the last degree in all his disputations—when, for instance,

In his treatise “On Digestion”247, he argues jealously with those who consider that this is a process of putrefaction of the food;

in his work “On Anadosis,”248 with those who think that the anadosis of blood through the veins results from the contiguity of the arteries;

in his work “On Respiration,” with those who maintain that the air is forced along by contraction.

He contradicted those who maintain that the urine passes into the bladder in a vaporous state,249 as also those who say that imbibed fluids are carried into the lung.

Erasistratus disputed with the ancients on the origin of blood.

At the beginning of his treatise on “General Principles” he wrote how all the various natural functions take place, and through what parts of the animal!

When the faculty which naturally digests food is weak, the animal’s digestion fails, whereas the faculty which turns the digested food into blood cannot suffer any kind of impairment?251