There cannot, then, be food which is suited for the animal which is not also correspondingly subdued5 by the qualities existing in the animal. And to be subdued means to undergo alteration6. Now, some parts are stronger in power and others weaker; therefore, while all will subdue4 the nutriment which is proper to the animal, they will not all do so equally. Thus the stomach will subdue and alter its food, but not to the same extent as will the liver, veins7, arteries8, and heart.
We must therefore observe to what extent it does alter it. The alteration is more than that which occurs in the mouth, but less than that in the liver and veins. For the latter alteration changes the nutriment into the substance of blood, whereas that in the mouth obviously changes it into a new form, but certainly does not completely transmute9 it. This you may discover in the food which is left in the intervals10 between the teeth, and which remains12 there all night; the bread is not exactly bread, nor the meat meat, for they have a smell similar to that of the animal’s mouth, and have been disintegrated13 and dissolved, and have had the qualities of the animal’s flesh impressed upon them. And you may observe the extent of the alteration which occurs to food in the mouth if you will chew some corn and then apply it to an unripe14 [undigested] boil: you will see it rapidly transmuting15 — in fact entirely16 digesting — the boil, though it cannot do anything of the kind if you mix it with water. And do not let this surprise you; this phlegm [saliva] in the mouth is also a cure for lichens15; it even rapidly destroys scorpions17; while, as regards the animals which emit venom18, some it kills at once, and others after an interval11; to all of them in any case it does great damage. Now, the masticated19 food is all, firstly, soaked in and mixed up with this phlegm; and secondly20, it is brought into contact with the actual skin of the mouth; thus it undergoes more change than the food which is wedged into the vacant spaces between the teeth.
But just as masticated food is more altered than the latter kind, so is food which has been swallowed more altered than that which has been merely masticated. Indeed, there is no comparison between these two processes; we have only to consider what the stomach contains — phlegm, bile, pneuma, [innate22] heat, and, indeed the whole substance of the stomach. And if one considers along with this the adjacent viscera like a lot of burning hearths23 around a great cauldron — to the right the liver, to the left the spleen, the heart above, and along with it the diaphragm (suspended and in a state of constant movement), and the omentum sheltering them all — you may believe what an extraordinary alteration it is which occurs in the food taken into the stomach.
How could it easily become blood if it were not previously24 prepared by means of a change of this kind? It has already been shown that nothing is altered all at once from one quality to its opposite. How then could bread, beef, beans, or any other food turn into blood if they had not previously undergone some other alteration? And how could the faeces be generated right away in the small intestine25? For what is there in this organ more potent26 in producing alteration than the factors in the stomach? Is it the number of the coats, or the way it is surrounded by neighbouring viscera, or the time that the food remains in it, or some kind of innate heat which it contains? Most assuredly the intestines27 have the advantage of the stomach in none of these respects. For what possible reason, then, will objectors have it that bread may often remain a whole night in the stomach and still preserve its original qualities, whereas when once it is projected into the intestines, it straightway becomes ordure? For, if such a long period of time is incapable28 of altering it, neither will the short period be sufficient, or, if the latter is enough, surely the longer time will be much more so! Well, then, can it be that, while the nutriment does undergo an alteration in the stomach, this is a different kind of alteration and one which is not dependent on the nature of the organ which alters it? Or if it be an alteration of this latter kind, yet one perhaps which is not proper to the body of the animal? This is still more impossible. Digestion29 was shown to be nothing else than an alteration to the quality proper to that which is receiving nourishment30. Since, then, this is what digestion means and since the nutriment has been shown to take on in the stomach a quality appropriate to the animal which is about to be nourished by it, it has been demonstrated adequately that nutriment does undergo digestion in the stomach.
And Asclepiades is absurd when he states that the quality of the digested food never shows itself either in eructations or in the vomited31 matter, or on dissection32. For of course the mere21 fact that the food smells of the body shows that it has undergone gastric33 digestion. But this man is so foolish that, when he hears the Ancients saying that the food is converted in the stomach into something “good,” he thinks it proper to look out not for what is good in its possible effects, but for what is good to the taste: this is like saying that apples (for so one has to argue with him) become more apple-like [in flavour] in the stomach, or honey more honey-like!
Erasistratus, however, is still more foolish and absurd, either through not perceiving in what sense the Ancients said that digestion is similar to the process of boiling, or because he purposely confused himself with sophistries34. It is, he says, inconceivable that digestion, involving as it does such trifling35 warmth, should be related to the boiling process. This is as if we were to suppose that it was necessary to put the fires of Etna under the stomach before it could manage to alter the food; or else that, while it was capable of altering the food, it did not do this by virtue36 of its innate heat, which of course was moist, so that the word boil was used instead of bake.
What he ought to have done, if it was facts that he wished to dispute about, was to have tried to show, first and foremost, that the food is not transmuted37 or altered in quality by the stomach at all, and secondly, if he could not be confident of this, he ought to have tried to show that this alteration was not of any advantage to the animal. If, again, he were unable even to make this misrepresentation, he ought to have attempted to confute the postulate38 concerning the active principles — to show, in fact, that the functions taking place in the various parts do not depend on the way in which the Warm, Cold, Dry, and Moist are mixed, but on some other factor. And if he had not the audacity39 to misrepresent facts even so far as this, still he should have tried at least to show that the Warm is not the most active of all the principles which play a part in things governed by Nature. But if he was unable to demonstrate this any more than any of the previous propositions, then he ought not to have made himself ridiculous by quarrelling uselessly with a mere name — as though Aristotle had not clearly stated in the fourth book of his “Meteorology,” as well as in many other passages, in what way digestion can be said to be allied40 to boiling, and also that the latter expression is not used in its primitive41 or strict sense.
But, as has been frequently said already, the one starting-point of all this is a thorough-going enquiry into the question of the Warm, Cold, Dry and Moist; this Aristotle carried out in the second of his books “On Genesis and Destruction,” where he shows that all the transmutations and alterations42 throughout the body take place as a result of these principles. Erasistratus, however, advanced nothing against these or anything else that has been said above, but occupied himself merely with the word “boiling.”
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1 sufficiently | |
adv.足够地,充分地 | |
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2 acting | |
n.演戏,行为,假装;adj.代理的,临时的,演出用的 | |
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3 appreciable | |
adj.明显的,可见的,可估量的,可觉察的 | |
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4 subdue | |
vt.制服,使顺从,征服;抑制,克制 | |
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5 subdued | |
adj. 屈服的,柔和的,减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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6 alteration | |
n.变更,改变;蚀变 | |
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7 veins | |
n.纹理;矿脉( vein的名词复数 );静脉;叶脉;纹理 | |
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8 arteries | |
n.动脉( artery的名词复数 );干线,要道 | |
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9 transmute | |
vt.使变化,使改变 | |
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10 intervals | |
n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 );间隔时间;[数学]区间;(戏剧、电影或音乐会的)幕间休息 | |
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11 interval | |
n.间隔,间距;幕间休息,中场休息 | |
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12 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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13 disintegrated | |
v.(使)破裂[分裂,粉碎],(使)崩溃( disintegrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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14 unripe | |
adj.未成熟的;n.未成熟 | |
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15 transmuting | |
v.使变形,使变质,把…变成…( transmute的现在分词 ) | |
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16 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
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17 scorpions | |
n.蝎子( scorpion的名词复数 ) | |
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18 venom | |
n.毒液,恶毒,痛恨 | |
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19 masticated | |
v.咀嚼( masticate的过去式和过去分词 );粉碎,磨烂 | |
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20 secondly | |
adv.第二,其次 | |
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21 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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22 innate | |
adj.天生的,固有的,天赋的 | |
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23 hearths | |
壁炉前的地板,炉床,壁炉边( hearth的名词复数 ) | |
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24 previously | |
adv.以前,先前(地) | |
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25 intestine | |
adj.内部的;国内的;n.肠 | |
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26 potent | |
adj.强有力的,有权势的;有效力的 | |
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27 intestines | |
n.肠( intestine的名词复数 ) | |
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28 incapable | |
adj.无能力的,不能做某事的 | |
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29 digestion | |
n.消化,吸收 | |
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30 nourishment | |
n.食物,营养品;营养情况 | |
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31 vomited | |
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32 dissection | |
n.分析;解剖 | |
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33 gastric | |
adj.胃的 | |
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34 sophistries | |
n.诡辩术( sophistry的名词复数 );(一次)诡辩 | |
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35 trifling | |
adj.微不足道的;没什么价值的 | |
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36 virtue | |
n.德行,美德;贞操;优点;功效,效力 | |
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37 transmuted | |
v.使变形,使变质,把…变成…( transmute的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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38 postulate | |
n.假定,基本条件;vt.要求,假定 | |
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39 audacity | |
n.大胆,卤莽,无礼 | |
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40 allied | |
adj.协约国的;同盟国的 | |
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41 primitive | |
adj.原始的;简单的;n.原(始)人,原始事物 | |
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42 alterations | |
n.改动( alteration的名词复数 );更改;变化;改变 | |
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