Problemata Aristotelis

How do changes in times and winds intensify, remove, judge, or cause diseases?
Are they such as are cold, hot, moist, or dry, and does the excess of these qualities cause diseases? For health is a certain mediocrity balance. If a disease consists in a moist or cold material, the coming time, being contrary, will be able to remove it. But if a contrary state does not follow, and a similar status of time supervenes, it will certainly intensify and destroy. Hence it also happens that those who are well begin to fall ill when the time changes. For the temperament of the body must necessarily be dissolved, as it is only suitable to be augmented and preserved in a proper state of times, ages, and places. Therefore, when times change, the account of health must be held more diligently. The same thing is present particularly for the cause that I proposed universally concerning times. For the mutations of winds, ages, and places must be accepted through the mutation of a certain time. Therefore, these also have the power of intensifying, or removing, or judging, or causing a disease, just as times do. And the rising of the stars—Orion, Arcturus, the Pleiades, the Dog Star—which excite winds and rains, which are accustomed to bring fair weather, cold, or heat.

Why should vomiting be encouraged most when times change? Lest disturbance result, when various excrements of useless material arrive from the method of changing. Hence it happens that some digest food well, while others desire little.
Wherefore do those who eat vicious food, or labor under long fasting, tend to have swollen feet?
Is it that in both cases, that happens through wasting and consumption? For those who hunger waste away because they take in no nourishment at all, and those who eat viciously waste away because they cannot enjoy what they have consumed.