| [p. 368]sense or understanding, except that when the
man is affected with unexpected joy or sorrow, it throbs and produces
palpitations, owing to its thinness, and as having no belly to receive
anything good or bad that may present themselves to it, but it is
thrown into commotion by both these, from its natural weakness. It
then perceives beforehand none of those things which occur in the
body, but has received its name vaguely and without any proper reason,
like the parts about the heart, which are called auricles, but which
contribute nothing towards hearing. Some say that we think with the
heart, and that this is the part which is grieved, and experiences
care. But it is not so; only it contracts like the diaphragm, and
still more so for the same causes. For veins from all parts of the
body run to it, and it has valves, so as to as to perceive if any
pain or pleasurable emotion befall the man. For when grieved the body
necessarily shudders, and is contracted, and from excessive joy it
is affected in like manner. Wherefore the heart and the diaphragm
are particularly sensitive, they have nothing to do, however, with
the operations of the understanding, but of all but of all these the
brain is the cause. Since, then, the brain, as being the primary seat
of sense and of the spirits, perceives whatever occurs in the body,
if any change more powerful than usual take place in the air, owing
to the seasons, the brain becomes changed by the state of the air.
For, on this account, the brain first perceives, because, I say, all
the most acute, most powerful, and most deadly diseases, and those
which are most difficult to be understood by the inexperienced, fall
upon the brain.
And the disease called the Sacred arises from causes as the others,
namely, those things which enter and quit the body, such as cold,
the sun, and the winds, which are ever changing and are never at rest.
And these things are divine, so that there is no necessity for making
a distinction, and holding this disease to be more divine than the
others, but all are divine, and all human. And each has its own peculiar
nature and power, and none is of an ambiguous nature, or irremediable.
And the most of them are curable by the same means as those by which
any other thing is food to one, and injurious to another. Thus, then,
the physician should under-
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