[263] i.e. fever as a cause of disease.
[264] As we should say, “circulatory” changes.
[265] This is the “vital spirit” or pneuma which, according to Erasistratus and the Pneumatist school, was elaborated in the left ventricle, and thereafter carried by the arteries all over the body, there to subserve circulatory processes. It has some analogy with oxygen, but this is also the case with the “natural spirit” or pneuma, whose seat was the liver and which was distributed by the veins through the body; it presided over the more vegetative processes. cf. p. 152, [note 1;] Introduction, p. [xxxiv].
[266] Even leaving the pneuma out of account, Galen claims that he can still prove his thesis.
[267] In other words: if dyscrasia is a first principle in pathology, then eucrasia must be a first principle in physiology.
[268] The above is a good instance of Galen’s “logical” method as applied to medical questions; an appeal to those who are capable of following “logical sequence.” cf. p. 209, [note 1].
[269] The aim of dietetics always being the production of moderate heat—i.e. blood.
[270] Note contrasted methods of Rationalists and Empiricists.
[271] Lit. anaesthesia. Linacre renders it indocilitas.
[272] p. 15.