Disputatio medica, de cibo et potu

tening, or drying them, specifically through those dominant qualities with which they are sometimes endowed.

XLII.

Hence, cold foods that are consumed cool the stomach—which sustains the first impulses of alteration—with their own coldness, and they produce a colder chyle original: "chylum" (the milky fluid resulting from the digestion of food in the small intestine), which is then converted into colder blood; from this, finally, all the parts that receive nourishment from it become and are rendered somewhat colder.

XLIII.

Thus, hot things are more active original: "ἐνεργητικώτερα" (more energetic/efficacious) in warming us: for they alter and change the entire condition of the body by their own quality and quantity of heat.

XLIV.

Just as a colder chyle is produced from colder foods, so a warmer chyle is produced from warmer ones; and consequently, as has already been said, all parts are rendered colder by a colder chyle, and warmer by a warmer one.

XLV.

So too, from more moist foods consumed, a more moist and watery chyle is created, which provides material for the serosity of the blood; through such serous blood, flesh is generated in the constitution of the body that is more lax and more moist, just as other solid parts are also less compact and firm when nourished and increased by such blood, and in the waste products of natural digestion, an overflowing moisture of the consumed foods is evidently seen and appears.