men and discover the form and amount of nourishment suitable to a constitution weakened through disease.
The obvious fact that some forms of food will make a well person sick tells against those who imagine that disease is produced by an excess of warmth or cold, of dryness or moisture. "For if hot, or cold, or moist, or dry, be that which proves injurious to man, and if the person who would treat him properly must apply cold to the hot, hot to the cold, moist to the dry, and dry to the moist — then let a man eat wheat raw from the threshing floor, and raw meat, and drink water with it. 10 By using such a diet I know that he will suffer severely; for he will experience pains, his body will become weak and his bowels deranged, and he will not live long. What remedy then should be provided him? Hot, or cold? or moist? or dry? For, according to the hypothesis, it must be one of these that is injuring the patient, and must be removed by its contrary. But the surest and most obvious way is to change his diet, give bread instead of wheat, boiled flesh in the place of raw, and a little wine." 11
Having ridiculed and disproved such hypotheses in their application to medicine, the
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