Aristotle : On the parts of animals / translated, with introduction and notes by W. Ogle.
- Aristotle
- Date:
- 1882
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Aristotle : On the parts of animals / translated, with introduction and notes by W. Ogle. Source: Wellcome Collection.
206/316 page 158
![of refrigeration, just as a small fire is more easily extinguished than a large one. In other words disease, which consists in an abnormal incrca.se or decrease of the Ixxlily heat and moisture, is the more dangerous the older the body is. Should no disease intervene, the bodily heat and moistitre grow less and le.ss by gradual exhalation, until at last they are expended ; but so gradual is the process that the departure of the soul occurs imperceptibly and without pain. 11. D. G. et C. ii. 2 and 3 ; cf. ii. i. Note 3. 12. It is a matter of familiar observation that degrees of heat and cold which affect some persons agreeably are distressing to others; and in disease one sometimes finds a sttrking contrast in this respect even between different parts of the same person. Thus I once had a patient who presented the following curious phenomenon. A moderately hot substance applied to his right foot caused an agreeable sensation of warmth; but the application of the same to the left foot made him yell, and he said that the sensation he experienced- was not of heat but of simple pain. 13. Olive oil can scarcely be meant, as Frantzius supposes; for it coagulates some seven degrees above the freezing-point of water. “'EAoiov is often used generally for any oil, as {H. A. vii. 3, 2) for oil of cedar. Possibly A. is here speaking pf fish-oil, with which he was {H. A. iii. 17, 3) well acquainted, and which remains fluid at a temperature considerably below the freezing-point of water. ‘ 14. Because in A.’s opinion it derives its heat from the heart, or from the celestial heat which has its main seat in the heart. 15. The more obvious phenomena of heat and cold can be explained equally well either by supposing both of these to be actual existences with opposite characters, or by supposing one of them to be merely the absence or privation of the other. Which of these two views was the right one was the subject of early and often-renewed dispute. Plutarch {De primo frigido) discusses the question and answers it in the same sense as Aristotle. In stating however the opposite opinion Plutarch incidentally touches on what would I fancy be given by modem physicists as the reason for holding cold to be no more than privation of heat. “Is there,” he asks, in beginning his treatise, “such a thing actually existing as cold ? or is cold nothing more than privation of heat, as darkness is privation of light and immobility privation of motion? For in fact^cold appears to be quiescent, and heat to be a source of motion]' (htei Kal rb \pvxpov eotxe oTciaifiOi/ iloai, KivfiriKoo Se rb Bepnov). 16. “ Limus ut hie durescit, et hsec ut cera liquescit, Uno eodemque igne.”—Virgil. 17. Cf. ii. 4, Note 10. 18. Had A. possessed the thermometer or similar instrument he would have seen that in some of his instances the difference is only one of degree. That boiling water for instance acts differently from red-hot iron, because its temperature is enormously inferior. It is worth noticing how well A. has here escaped the popular error, according to which, in all bodies which are ordinarily designated by a common adjective, there must be one common elementary property corresponding to this common title. From this tyranny of an adjective, as Whewell calls it, even Bacon was not free. Among his “instantiae convenientes in naturam calidi ” we find nasturtium which is hot to the tongue, acids which, hotly burn the skin, fur and other hot coverings, spirits of wine which, as hot . bodies, coagulate white of egg, and so on ; the mere verbal link serv’ing to bind together most diverse phenomena. (Ch.. 3.) 1. The external influence is the heat of the heart, to which K. attributes that of the blood (cf. ii. 2, Note 14).](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24864249_0206.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
