Sayfa 855 / 1391

Well, I said, and to require the help of medicine, not when a

wound has to be cured, or on occasion of an epidemic, but just

because, by indolence and a habit of life such as we have been

describing, men fill themselves with waters and winds, as if

their bodies were a marsh, compelling the ingenious sons of

Asclepius to find more names for diseases, such as flatulence and

catarrh; is not this, too, a disgrace?

Yes, he said, they do certainly give very strange and newfangled

names to diseases.

Yes, I said, and I do not believe that there were any such

diseases in the days of Asclepius; and this I infer from the

circumstance that the hero Eurypylus, after he has been wounded

in Homer, drinks a posset of Pramnian wine well besprinkled with

barley-meal and grated cheese, which are certainly inflammatory,

and yet the sons of Asclepius who were at the Trojan war do not

blame the damsel who gives him the drink, or rebuke Patroclus,

who is treating his case.