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ON THE NATURAL FACULTIES Book I
PART 17
[p. 113]Yet one often urinates practically the same quantity as one has drunk, which would show that the whole of what one drinks goes to the kidneys.
Thus the author of this third piece
of trickery would appear to have achieved nothing, but to have been at once detected, and there still remains the original difficulty which was insoluble by Erasistratus and by all others except Hippocrates. I dwell purposely on this topic, knowing well that nobody else has anything to say about the function of the kidneys, but that either we must prove more foolish than the very butchers
cf. p. 51.
if we do not agree that the urine passes through the kidneys; or, if one acknowledges this, that then one cannot possibly give any other reason for the secretion than the principle of attraction.
Now, if the movement of urine does not depend on the tendency of a vacuum to become refilled,
Horror vacui. Note analogical reasoning; cf. p. 289, note 1.
it is clear that neither does that of the blood nor that of the bile; or if that of these latter does so, then so also does that of the former. For they must all be accomplished in one and the same way, even according to Erasistratus himself. This matter, however, will be discussed more
fully in the book following this.
