Book 1
16
We will, however, speak about the stomach again. And the dispersal of nutriment [anadosis] need not make us have recourse to the theory regarding the natural tendency of a vacuum to become refilled,This was Erasistratus's favourite principle, known in Latin as the horror vacui and in English as Nature's abhorrence of a vacuum, although these terms are not an exact translation of the Greek. τὸ κενούμενον probably means the vacuum, not the matter evacuated, although Galen elsewhere uses κενόω in the latter (non-classical) sense, e.g. pp. 67, 215. Akolouthia is a following-up, a sequence, almost a consequence. when once we have granted the attractive faculty of the kidneys. Now, although Erasistratus knew that this faculty most certainly existed, he neither mentioned it nor denied it, nor did he make any statement as to his views on the secretion of urine.
