Book 1
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In both cases the whole body is itchy; heat at the nostrils, small, indeed, but pungent; the bilious particles prickly. The taste of bitter things is not bitter; and yet, strange to tell, it is not sweet; but the taste of sweet things is bitter. For in the mouth the bile lodged in the tongue, prevailing over the articles of food, sophisticates the sensation; for the tongue, having imbibed the bile, does not perceive them, while, during the season of abstinence from food, the bile remains torpid, neither is the tongue unpleasantly affected with that to which it is habituated; but the bile, if heated up by the tastes of the articles of food, impresses the tongue. When, therefore, the food is bitter, the sensation is of the bitter things; but when sweet, of the bilious. For the sensation of the bile anticipates the other, and thus deceives those who suppose that bitter things appear sweet; for it is not so, but because it is not exacerbated by the bitter lodged in it from being habituated to the disease, the phantasy of sweet is created; and there is the same condition in sweet and bitter tastes; for the bile is the screen of the fallacious tastes.
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When, therefore, it appears without inflammation of any viscus, it is usually not dangerous, though protracted; but if prolonged, and the viscus gets inflamed, it terminates most commonly in dropsy and cachexia. And many have died emaciated, without dropsy. It is familiar to adolescents and young men, and to them it is less dangerous; it is not altogether unusual also with children, but in them it is not entirely free from danger.
CHAPTER XVI. ON CACHEXIA, OR BAD HABIT OF BODY.
