When the
several parts of the flesh are separated by disease, if the
foundation remains, the power of the disorder is only half as
great, and there is still a prospect of an easy recovery; but
when that which binds the flesh to the bones is diseased, and no
longer being separated from the muscles and sinews, ceases to
give nourishment to the bone and to unite flesh and bone, and
from being oily and smooth and glutinous becomes rough and salt
and dry, owing to bad regimen, then all the substance thus
corrupted crumbles away under the flesh and the sinews, and
separates from the bone, and the fleshy parts fall away from
their foundation and leave the sinews bare and full of brine, and
the flesh again gets into the circulation of the blood and makes
the previously-mentioned disorders still greater. And if these
bodily affections be severe, still worse are the prior disorders;
as when the bone itself, by reason of the density of the flesh,
does not obtain sufficient air, but becomes mouldy and hot and
gangrened and receives no nutriment, and the natural process is
inverted, and the bone crumbling passes into the food, and the
food into the flesh, and the flesh again falling into the blood
makes all maladies that may occur more virulent than those
already mentioned. But the worst case of all is when the marrow
is diseased, either from excess or defect; and this is the cause
of the very greatest and most fatal disorders, in which the whole
course of the body is reversed.
There is a third class of diseases which may be conceived of
as arising in three ways; for they are produced sometimes by
wind, and sometimes by phlegm, and sometimes by bile. When the
lung, which is the dispenser of the air to the body, is
obstructed by rheums and its passages are not free, some of them
not acting, while through others too much air enters, then the
parts which are unrefreshed by air corrode, while in other parts
the excess of air forcing its way through the veins distorts them
and decomposing the body is enclosed in the midst of it and
occupies the midriff thus numberless painful diseases are
produced, accompanied by copious sweats. And oftentimes when the
flesh is dissolved in the body, wind, generated within and unable
to escape, is the source of quite as much pain as the air coming
in from without; but the greatest pain is felt when the wind gets
about the sinews and the veins of the shoulders, and swells them
up, so twists back the great tendons and the sinews which are
connected with them. These disorders are called tetanus and
opisthotonus, by reason of the tension which accompanies them.
The cure of them is difficult; relief is in most cases given by
fever supervening. The white phlegm, though dangerous when
detained within by reason of the air-bubbles, yet if it can
communicate with the outside air, is less severe, and only
discolours the body, generating leprous eruptions and similar
diseases. When it is mingled with black bile and dispersed about
the courses of the head, which are the divinest part of us, the
attack if coming on in sleep, is not so severe; but when
assailing those who are awake it is hard to be got rid of, and
being an affection of a sacred part, is most justly called sacred.
An acid and salt phlegm, again, is the source of all those
diseases which take the form of catarrh, but they have many names
because the places into which they flow are manifold.
Inflammations of the body come from burnings and inflamings,
and all of them originate in bile. When bile finds a means of
discharge, it boils up and sends forth all sorts of tumours; but
when imprisoned within, it generates many inflammatory diseases,
above all when mingled with pure blood; since it then displaces
the fibres which are scattered about in the blood and are
designed to maintain the balance of rare and dense, in order that
the blood may not be so liquefied by heat as to exude from the
pores of the body, nor again become too dense and thus find a
difficulty in circulating through the veins. The fibres are so
constituted as to maintain this balance; and if any one brings
them all together when the blood is dead and in process of
cooling, then the blood which remains becomes fluid, but if they
are left alone, they soon congeal by reason of the surrounding
cold. The fibres having this power over the blood, bile, which is
only stale blood, and which from being flesh is dissolved again
into blood, at the first influx coming in little by little, hot
and liquid, is congealed by the power of the fibres; and so
congealing and made to cool, it produces internal cold and
shuddering. When it enters with more of a flood and overcomes the
fibres by its heat, and boiling up throws them into disorder, if
it have power enough to maintain its supremacy, it penetrates the
marrow and burns up what may be termed the cables of the soul,
and sets her free; but when there is not so much of it, and the
body though wasted still holds out, the bile is itself mastered,
and is either utterly banished, or is thrust through the veins
into the lower or upper-belly, and is driven out of the body like
an exile from a state in which there has been civil war; whence
arise diarrhoeas and dysenteries, and all such disorders.
