Problemata Aristotelis

...it will loosen the bowels, but if in small quantity, and it is old, it will loosen the bladder. Is it because each is moved more by specific things? For pepper stirs urine more, and scammony the bowels. Therefore, if pepper is taken more copiously, it is carried to the bladder and does not diffuse itself into the bowels. But if you take a small amount, being retained, it will loosen the bowels, and thus it becomes a medicament for it. Scammony, however, which is given more copiously, is retained so that it may resolve; having been resolved, it now becomes a medicament, for the reason we proposed above. But if it is small, it is absorbed together with the swallowed humor through invisible passages, and is carried into the bladder more quickly before it disturbs. By its faculty, it carries away the excrement and residing colluvies from the surface. But those large amounts, as has been said, which have remained for a long time due to the strength of their powers, purge abundantly and draw out earthy filth especially.

Why does he heal the same inflammations, some by cooling, others by heating and digesting? Is it because it pleases them to gather the abundance of their heat, in some by refrigeration, in others by external heat?

Why should poultices be changed? Is it so that it may feel more fully? For it is the custom that those things we entrust to the stomach are no longer medicaments, but are received as nourishment; thus, these also cannot perform their function.

Why is it healthy to diminish food and increase labor? Is it because the excess of excrement holds the cause of illness, which certainly exults when either food remains or labor is lacking?

Why can medicaments and bitter or foul-smelling things for the most part purge? Is it because all things that are bitter and smell bad cannot be digested? For this reason, medicaments are also bitter and fetid. Because they admit no digestion to themselves, and can move with bitterness, they here possess the nature of a strong medicament.