Timaeus — Plato

Disorders produced by wind a?id phlegm. 507 all maladies that may occur more virulent than those already nmaeus. mentioned. But the worst case of all is when the marrow is Timaeus. 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 (Hi) a third of as arising in three ways ; for they are produced sometimes diseased is by wind, and sometimes by phlegm, and sometimes by bile, produced When the lung, which is the dispenser of the air to the body, ^j ^^'^^^. is obstructed by rheums and its passages are not free, some orders of 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 tetanus and oftentimes when the flesh is dissolved in the body, wind, °^'^^ otonus ; 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, and 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 85 given by fever supervening.

The white phlegm, though ^. by phlegm dangerous when detained within by reason of the air-bubbles, ~' ''• ''-'P''°sy' 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 epilepsy, to be got rid of, and being an affection of a sacred part, is most justly called sacred.

An acid and salt phlegm, again, and catarrh, 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 in- [e^tumoTrs flamings, and all of them originate in bile. When bile finds and

5o8 'I'iiitneus. TlMAEUS. inflammations, chills and shuddering, disease of the marrow, diarrhoea and dysentery.

Excess of fire causes continuous fever, of air quotidian, of water tertian, of earth quartan.

There are two kinds of mental disease.

The effects of bile on the system. 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 coohng, 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 powder 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 stiP 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.

When the constitution is disordered by excess of fire, continuous heat and fever are the result ; when excess of air is the cause, then the fever is quotidian ; when of water, which is a more sluggish element than either fire or air, then the fever is a tertian ; when of earth, which is the most sluggish of the four, and is only purged away in a four-fold period, the result is a quartan fever, which can with difficulty be shaken oflF.

Such is the manner in which diseases of the body arise ; the disorders of the soul, which depend upon the body, originate as follows. We must acknowledge disease of the mind to be a want of intelligence ; and of this there are two