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ON THE NATURAL FACULTIES Book I
PART 13
[p. 65]
And what profit did he derive from these opinions from the point of view of treatment? He neither was able to cure a kidney ailment, nor jaundice, nor a disease of black bile, nor would he agree with the view held not merely by Hippocrates but by all men regarding drugs- that some of them purge
away yellow bile, and others black, some again phlegm, and others the thin and watery superfluity;
were produced by the drugs themselves, just as yellow bile is produced by the biliary passages! It matters nothing, according to this extraordinary man, whether we give a hydragogue or a cholagogue in a case of dropsy, for these all equally purge and dissolve the body, and produce a solution having such and such an appearance, which did not exist as such before!
i.e. bile and phlegm had no existence as such before the drugs were given; they are the products of dissolved tissue. Asclepiades did not believe that diseases were due to a materia peccans, but to disturbances in teh movements of the molecules (ὄρκοι) which constitute the body; thus, in opposition to the humoralists such as Galen, he had no use for drugs. cf. p. 49, note 5.
Must we not, therefore, suppose he was either mad, or entirely unacquainted with practical medicine? For who does not know that if a drug for attracting phlegm be given in a case of jaundice it will not even evacuate four cyathi
About 4 oz., or one-third of a pint.
of phlegm? Similarly also if one of the hydragogues be given. A cholagogue, on the other hand, clears away a great quantity of bile, and the skin of patients so treated at once becomes clear. I myself have, in many cases, after treating the liver condition, then removed the disease by means of a single purgation; whereas, if one had employed a drug for removing phlegm one would have done no good.
