[p. 41]
PART 15
XV. I am at a loss to understand how those who
maintain the other view, and abandon the old method
to rest the art on a postulate, treat their patients
on the lines of their postulate. For they have
not discovered, I think, an absolute hot or cold,
dry or moist, that participates in no other form.
But I think that they have at their disposal the
same foods and the same drinks as we all use,
and to one they add the attribute of being hot, to
another, cold, to another, dry, to another, moist,
since it would be futile to order a patient to take
something hot, as he would at once ask, " What hot
thing ? " So that they must either talk nonsense
or have recourse to one of these known substances.
And if one hot thing happens to be astringent, and
another hot thing insipid, and a third hot thing
causes flatulence (for there are many various kinds
of hot things, possessing many opposite powers),
surely it will make a difference whether he administers
the hot astringent thing, or the hot insipid
thing, or that which is cold and astringent at the
same time (for there is such a thing), or the cold
insipid thing. For I am sure that each of these
pairs produces exactly the opposite of that produced
by the other, not only in a man, but in a leathern
or wooden vessel, and in many other things less
sensitive than man. For it is not the heat which
possesses the great power, but the astringent and
the insipid, and the other qualities I have mentioned,
both in man and out of man, whether eaten or
drunk, whether applied externally as ointment or as
plaster.
|