General reasoning about reasons

The causes of the various states of the body that we have already talked about earlier, that is, health, illness and the average state between them, there are three: a previous cause, an external cause and a connecting cause. The antecedent and connecting causes have this in common, that they are things corporeal, that is, connected with juice, or with nature, or with composition, and the external cause refers to things standing outside the substance of the body, and comes either from external bodies, such as, something that happens from a blow, from hot air, from food, hot or cold, entering the body, or from the soul, since the soul is something different from the body. This is, for example, what happens from anger and fear and from things that are similar to them. Antecedent and external causes agree in the fact that sometimes there is some kind of intermediate link between them and the above-mentioned states of the body, and external causes and connecting causes agree in the fact that sometimes there is no intermediate link between them and the above-mentioned states of the body. However, antecedent causes differ from connecting causes in that the antecedent causes are not immediately followed by one or another state, and between them there are other causes that are closer to one or another state of the body than the previous ones. Antecedent causes differ from external causes in that the former are bodily. And one more thing: between the preceding causes and the state of the body there is certainly an intermediate link, but with external causes this is not necessary. There is absolutely no intermediate link between connecting causes and the state of the body, and with external causes this is not necessary, and both circumstances are equally possible.

Antecedent causes are bodily causes, that is, related to juices, natures or composition, which determine this or that state not as a primary cause, that is, they determine it with the help of an intermediate link, and connecting causes are bodily causes that determine various states of the body as the root cause, that is, they determine them without an intermediary link. External causes are non-physical causes that determine various states of the body both as primary causes and not as primary causes.

Example of antecedent causes: overflow of juices causing fever, overflow of the vessels of the eye causing cataracts; Examples of connecting causes: putrefaction causing fever, moisture flowing to the openings of the grape skin as a cause of blockage of blood vessels and blockage as a cause of blindness.

An example of external causes: the heat of the sun, increased physical movement, worries, insomnia, eating hot foods such as garlic - all this causes fever, as well as a blow to the eye, causing dilation of the pupil and cataracts.

Every cause is either a cause essentially, like pepper, which is hot, or opium, which is cold, or a secondary one, like cold water, which warms by contracting the pores and locking in the heat, or hot water, which cools by dissolving juices, or scammoniums, which cools, expelling intoxicating juices.

Not every cause that reaches the body has an effect on it; sometimes three more things are needed: a force emanating from the active force, a force emanating from the predisposing force of the body, and also the possibility of the meeting of one of these forces with the other for a time sufficient for the given effect of the cause to manifest itself.

The nature of the causes as conditioning factors varies. Sometimes the cause is the same, but produces different diseases in the bodies of different people, or produces different diseases at different times; The effect of the same causes on a strong and a weak person, on a very sensitive and on a little sensitive person, is not the same.

Some causes of illness leave a trace, others leave no trace. Causes that leave a trace are those causes whose influence remains when they leave the body, and causes that leave no trace are those causes after the disappearance of which recovery occurs.

We say: the causes that change the state of the body and keep its state unchanged are either obligatory causes that a person cannot resist throughout his life, or not obligatory. There are six categories of obligatory causes: the category of ambient air, the category of food and drink, the category of movements and rest of the body, the category of movements of the soul, the category of sleep and wakefulness, the category of emptying and retention. Let's start first of all with the category of air.