Causes of health and illness and the inevitability of death

Medicine is primarily divided into two parts: the theoretical part and the practical part. Each of these parts is science and theory. However, that part, which is specifically called theory, speaks only of views, and not of practical knowledge, that is, this is the part with the help of which natures, juices, forces, types of diseases, their manifestations and causes are known.

That part, which is especially called practical, gives knowledge of how to perform procedures and establish a regimen, that is, this is the part that teaches you how to maintain health with such and such a state of the body or how to treat the body with such and such a disease. Don’t think that the practical part is only practice and treatment methods. On the contrary, it is that part of medicine that teaches these practices and methods of treatment, as we explained above.

In the first and second parts of the Book, we completed the presentation of the general theoretical part of medicine.

Now in the remaining two parts we will outline the practical part of medicine in general terms.

The practice is divided into two parts. The first of them is knowledge of the regime of healthy bodies, that is, it is devoted to issues of maintaining health and is therefore called the science of maintaining health. The second part is knowledge of the regime of a large body, indicating the path to returning to a healthy state; it is called the science of healing.

In this third part we will briefly outline the arguments about maintaining health.

We say: the primary source of the formation of our body consists of two things, namely: the seed of a man, which serves as a kind of active principle, and the female seed and menstrual blood, which serves as a kind of soil. In view of the fact that these two principles have common qualities of fluidity and moisture, as well as opposite properties, expressed by the predominance of wateriness and earthiness in the blood and in the female semen, and the predominance of airiness and fieryness in the male semen, it is necessary that their primary combination be moist, although the being formed from them also contains earthiness and fiery quality.

Earthiness, due to its hardness, and fiery, due to its property of making it ripen, mutually promote each other, bind the embryo and transform it into a very solid state. However, this hardening does not reach the level of hardening of such solid bodies as stone and glass, which do not disintegrate at all or disintegrate to such an insignificant extent that it is not noticeable. For this reason they remain forever or for a very long time safe from the destruction caused by decay. But with the embryo the situation is different. Namely, our body is the object of two types of destruction, each of which is caused by internal and external causes. One type of destruction is the gradual disappearance of the moisture from which we are created, and the other is the decay and deterioration of moisture and the loss of its ability to support life. However, this differs from the first type of destruction, although it also causes damage to moisture until it dries out; in this case, the moisture first deteriorates, then changes its state suitable for our body, and finally, due to decay, it disappears.

Rotting first spoils the moisture and then destroys it, and scatters dry, ash-like things. In addition to these two types of destruction, there are other types of destruction caused by other causes, such as cold causing freezing, hot wind, various types of destructive disruption of continuity and other diseases. However, only the first two mentioned types of disorders belong to the issue under discussion and are more worthy of attention for the preservation of health.

Each of these types of destruction is caused by external or internal reasons.

External causes include air, which destroys and causes moisture to rot.

Internal causes include the innate heat within us, which destroys the moisture in us, and collateral heat formed within us from food and other putrefactive substances.

All these reasons contribute to each other in the drying out of our body. After all, even our initial development and achievement of maturity, as well as our ability to perform various actions, are accompanied by a large amount of energy that takes place in our body. Subsequently, such drying continues to occur until complete completion.

The drying out that occurs in our body is a necessity that cannot be avoided. From the very beginning we are extreme moisture, so it is certainly necessary that our warmth overcome the moisture, otherwise it will be suffocated by the moisture. Heat, of course, constantly acts on the moisture and constantly dries it out. The heat first dries the body to a degree of moderate dryness.

When our body reaches a degree of moderate dryness and, moreover, the warmth remains unchanged, further drying out will no longer be the same as at first, but will become stronger, because the smaller the mass of the substance, the more it is subject to drying out. Eventually the dryness goes beyond moderation and continues to increase until the moisture disappears.

Due to the fact that innate heat becomes the cause of the destruction of its matter, it on occasion turns into the cause of self-extinction and goes out just like a lamp when it runs out of oil.

As dryness increases, warmth decreases, and thus the body constantly becomes decrepit, at the same time the ability to replace moisture disappearing in increasing quantities weakens.

Increased body dryness occurs for two reasons:

1. due to a decrease in the intake of substances into the body,
2. Due to the decrease in moisture itself due to its disappearance caused by heat. The weakening of heat is caused by the following factors: a due to the predominance of dryness in the substance of the body, b due to the reduction of innate moisture, which serves as a matter for heat, that is, it acts as oil in the lamp, for there are two moistures in the lamp - water and oil. One of them keeps the lamp burning, and the other extinguishes it. In the same way, innate moisture maintains innate warmth, and foreign moisture suppresses it due to the increase in the amount of foreign moisture due to weakness of digestion; this moisture serves as water in a lamp.

When the drying of the innate moisture is completed, the innate warmth fades and natural death occurs.

The existence of a body, while it is alive, does not occur because the original natural moisture resists for a long time the destroying action of the heat of the external world, the innate heat of the body itself and the heat generated by the movement of the body, for this moisture is powerless for such opposition, but it resists thanks to constant replacement of the disappeared part of the moisture with a nutrient. We have already said that the strength of the body processes food and uses it up to a certain limit.

The art of maintaining health is not an art that prevents death, or rids the body of external disasters, or gives every body a very long life, which is natural for man to desire. It only ensures that the inherent moisture is prevented from rotting and the moisture is not quickly lost.

The moisture may remain in effect for a certain period of time, depending on its original nature.

This provision is achieved in the following way: a by establishing the correct regime to replace the moisture that disappears from the body, b by establishing a regime that prevents the predominance of causes that accelerate and cause drying out and c by establishing a regime that protects moisture from decay, which is achieved by protecting and preserving the body from the predominance of incidental heat, both external and internal.

Not all bodies are the same in the strength of basic moisture and basic heat, but each is different in this respect. Each body has a certain limit of resistance to inevitable drying out, which is determined by the nature of each body, innate warmth and amount of innate moisture. The body does not go beyond this limit, but sometimes it happens that it is not able to reach it due to the manifestation of new causes that contribute to drying out or lead to death in another way.

Many people say that the first case is a natural death, while in the second case the death is called accidental.

Thus, the art of preserving health is, as it were, a means of bringing each human body by maintaining the favorable conditions necessary for it until the age when death occurs, called natural death. This preservation is entrusted to two forces, which the doctor serves. One of them is a natural force, that is, nourishing and providing a replacement for what disappears from the body, the substance of which is close to earthiness and wateriness. The second is animal strength, that is, the force that makes the pulse beat. It provides a replacement for the disappeared part of the pneuma, which has an airy and fiery substance.

In view of the fact that food has no actual resemblance in nature to the organs that use it, a transforming force was created to change food into a state similar to the organs that use it, that is, that it became food in reality and in fact. For this purpose, various organs and channels have been created to attract, expel, retain and digest.

Thus, we say that the main thing in the art of maintaining health is balancing the necessary, general factors mentioned above. The focus should be on balancing the seven factors. They are: balance of nature; choice of food and drink, cleansing the body of excess, maintaining a correct constitution, improving what is inhaled through the nose, adjusting clothing and balance of physical and mental movement. The latter includes, to some extent, sleep and wakefulness.

From what has been stated above, it should be clear to you that there is no single limit either for balance or for health. Nor can it be said that every nature at such and such a time has such and such health or such and such a degree of balance. The situation is different.

Now we will describe the regime of a newborn with a pronounced balance of nature.