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But I want to return to the theory of those who prosecute their researches in the art after the novel fashion, building on a postulate. For if there be such a thing as heat, or cold, or dryness, or moistness, which injures a man, it necessarily follows that the scientific healer will counteract cold with hot, hot with cold, moist with dry and dry with moist. Now suppose we have a man whose constitution is not strong, but weaker than the average. Let this man’s food be wheat straight from the threshing-floor, unworked and uncooked, and raw meat, and let his drink be water. The use of this diet will assuredly cause him much severe suffering; he will experience pains and physical weakness, his digestion will be ruined and he will not be able to live long. Well, what remedy should be prepared for a man in this condition? Heat or cold or dryness or moistness? One of these, plainly; for, according to the theory of the new school, if the injury was caused by one of the opposites, the other opposite ought to be a specific. Of course the most obvious as well as the most reliable medicine would be to abandon his old diet, and to give him bread instead of wheat, boiled meat instead of raw meat, and besides these things, a little wine to drink. This change must restore him to his health, unless indeed it has been entirely ruined by long continuance of the diet. What then shall we say? That he was suffering from cold, and that the taking of these hot things benefited him? Or shall we say the opposite? I think that I have nonplussed my opponent. For is it the heat of the wheat, or the cold, or the dryness, or the moistness, that the baker took away from it? For a thing which has been exposed to fire and to water, and has been made by many other things, each of which has its own individual propertyOr power. and nature, has lost some of its qualities and has been mixed and combined with others.
