Juice is a moist fluid body into which food is initially transformed. There is praiseworthy juice, the purpose of which is to transform, alone or in combination with something else, into a particle of a nutrient, or, alone or in combination with something, to become similar to a nutrient, in a word, to replace that part of the nutrient substances that dissolve in the body.
Juice can also be excessive and bad, the fate of which is not the same, and it rarely turns into praiseworthy juice. Its fate is to be removed from the body and expelled before it is digested into good juice.
We say: fluids in the body are primary and secondary. Primary liquids are four juices, which we will talk about later, and secondary liquids are divided into two parts: they are either excess or not. We will talk about surpluses later, but liquids that are not surpluses are those that change their original state and pass through the organs, without, however, becoming completely and actually a particle of any simple organ. There are four types of such liquids. One of them is a liquid contained in the pits at the ends of small vessels adjacent to the main organs and irrigating them with blood. The second liquid is sprayed in the main organs like dew it is capable of turning into a nutrient when the body is deprived of food, and moistens the organs when they are dry for some reason - from a sudden movement or other reason. The third is a liquid that has recently condensed, that is, food that has been transformed into the substance of organs by mixing and assimilating, but has not yet undergone a complete transformation in essence. The fourth is moisture, which enters the main organs from the moment growth begins and binds the particles of the organs together. The beginning of this moisture is from a drop of seed, and the beginning of the seed is from juices.
We will also say that the moisture of juices is praiseworthy and the excess is contained in four substances: in the substance of blood, which is the most excellent of them, in the substance of mucus, in the substance of yellow bile and in the substance of black bile. Blood is naturally hot and moist, and is of two types: natural and unnatural.
Natural blood is red in color, has no bad odor and is very sweet, and unnatural blood also comes in two types. Sometimes she changes and loses her good nature, not because something has been mixed with her, but due to the deterioration of her own nature, when her nature has become, for example, cold or hot. Sometimes the blood changes because a bad admixture has appeared in it. This also happens in two ways: the impurity either appears from the outside and, penetrating into the blood, spoils it, or it originates in the blood itself, for example, if part of the blood has rotted and its liquid part has turned into yellow bile, and the thick part - into black bile and both of these substances or one of them remained in the blood. This variety of unnatural blood with both its divisions is different depending on what exactly is mixed with it these may be different types of mucus, different types of black bile, different types of yellow bile and aqueous humor.
Therefore, such blood is sometimes thick, sometimes thin, sometimes very black, sometimes light its smell and taste also change - it becomes bitter or salty and sour.
As for mucus, it can also be natural and unnatural. Natural mucus is one that can someday turn into blood, because mucus is not fully matured blood. This mucus is a type of sweet mucus it is not very cold, but, on the contrary, compared to the body, it is not very cold, but compared to blood and yellow bile it is cold. Sweet mucus can also be unnatural. This is tasteless mucus if natural blood is mixed with it, which we will talk about later. Such mucus is often found in eruptions and spitting.
As for the natural sweet mucus, Galen argued that nature did not prepare for it any special organ like a vessel, as for both types of bile, for this mucus has a close resemblance to blood, and all organs need it. Therefore, it is distributed in the body like blood. We will say that this need for mucus is caused by two
circumstances: one of them is necessity, the other is benefit. There are two reasons for this need. The first is that the mucus should be close to the organs when the organs are deprived of food coming from outside, the mucus turns into good blood, suitable for the absorption of its substance by the stomach and liver. It also turns into blood as a result of random factors, the forces of which influence it with their innate warmth, bring it to maturity, digest it and feed on it. Just as innate heat brings mucus to maturity, digests it and turns it into good blood, so extraneous heat festeres and spoils it. This reason for necessity is not inherent in the bile of both types, since both biles do not share with mucus the ability to turn into blood under the influence of innate heat, although they have the common property with it that accidental heat makes them putrefactive and spoils them.
The second reason for the need for mucus is that the mucus must be mixed with the blood and adapt it to nourish the organs of mucous nature, such as the brain, because the blood that feeds them must actually contain mucus in a certain proportion. This is also true for both types of bile.
As for the usefulness of mucus, the mucus should moisten the joints and members that move a lot, so that the joints do not become dry due to the movement of the members and from friction. Such usefulness falls within the limits of necessity.
As for unnatural mucus, this includes residual mucus that has varying thicknesses, which can be detected even by the senses. This is nasal mucus. This also includes mucus, the thickness of which always seems to feel the same, but is actually different. This is raw mucus. Unnatural is also very thin, watery mucus, as well as very thick mucus, namely white, which is called “plaster”. This is the kind of mucus in which the liquid part is absorbed due to the fact that it often lingers in the joints and passages, and this kind of mucus is the thickest.
There is also a type of salt mucus, and it is the hottest, driest, most anhydrous mucus there is.
The cause of saltiness is always that the watery moisture, which has a weak or tasteless taste, is mixed with earthy particles - burnt, dry in nature, bitter in taste and evenly mixed. If there are too many of them, they add bitterness. From here salts are born and the waters become salty. Salt is made from ash, potash, lime and other substances by boiling them in water and straining them. Water is boiled until the substances condense into salt, or the solution is left to stand until it condenses. This is liquid mucus - tasteless or with a weak, not expressed taste. When naturally dry, burnt and evenly mixed bile is mixed with such mucus, it gives it saltiness and makes it hot. This produces bile mucus.
As for the worthy physician Galen, he says that this mucus is salty because of its putrefaction or because something watery is mixed with it. We say: rotting makes the mucus salty because combustion occurs in it and ash appears, which is mixed with its moisture. As for wateriness mixed with rotten mucus, wateriness alone does not cause salinity unless there is a second cause. Apparently, in Galen’s words, instead of the dividing “or” there should be only one connecting “and”, and then the speech will become complete. Mucus can also be acidic. Just as sweet mucus exists in two varieties: sweet in itself and sweet due to external admixtures, so sour mucus has two types of acid: either due to foreign admixture, that is, acidic black bile, which we will talk about shortly, or due to the property contained in the mucus itself, namely: with the said sweet or sweetish mucus the same thing happens as with other squeezed sweet juices - it first begins to boil and then becomes sour.
There is also tart mucus and its condition is the same as that of other types of mucus. Sometimes its astringency comes from the admixture of black, astringent bile, and sometimes due to the fact that the mucus itself cools greatly and its taste becomes tart due to the solidification of its watery part, so that the mucus becomes slightly earthy from dryness. Therefore, slight heat cannot cause such mucus to boil and become sour, and strong heat does not make it ripen.
There is also glassy mucus - thick and dense, similar in its ductility to molten glass. Sometimes such mucus is sour, sometimes fresh. It appears that the thick part of the bland glassy mucus is raw mucus or that it is turning into raw mucus.
This type of mucus is a type of mucus that was initially watery and cold. It did not rot, and nothing was mixed with it, but it remained compressed for so long that it thickened and became colder.
Thus, it is clear that mucus, which has a bad taste, comes in four varieties: salty, sour, tart and insipid. In terms of composition, there are also four of them: watery, glassy, nasal and gypsum raw mucus is considered to be nasal.
As for yellow bile, it can also be natural and it can be residual, unnatural. Natural bile is the foam of blood it is pure red, light, sharp The hotter it is, the redder it is.
When bile is born in the liver, it is divided into two parts: part goes with the blood, and part is filtered into the gallbladder. Part of the bile that leaves with the blood leaves for the sake of necessity and for the sake of benefit. The necessity is that bile should be mixed with the blood to nourish the organs, which are supposed to have in their nature a good part of the bile in accordance with their due share. These are, for example, the lungs. And the benefit of bile is that it should thin the blood and conduct it through narrow pathways.
Bile, filtered into the gallbladder, is also sent there for the sake of necessity and benefit. The need may extend either to the body and relate to the liberation of the body from residues, or to one of the organs which the bile must nourish with bitterness.
As for the benefits, they are twofold. Firstly, bile flushes sediment and sticky mucus from the stomach and, secondly, it causes a burning sensation in the intestines and muscles of the anus to feel the need to go out to defecate. This is why pain sometimes appears due to blockage of the duct leading from the gallbladder down into the intestines.
As for unnatural bile, it happens that bile loses its naturalness due to some foreign admixture, and sometimes bile loses its naturalness for a reason that lies within itself, for such bile is unnatural in its substance. The first type of unnatural bile is familiar and known: it is bile in which mucus is an impurity, and such bile most often originates in the liver. The second variety is less known it contains black bile as a foreign impurity. The well-known bile is either bright yellow or the color of an egg yolk. This happens because the mucus mixed with bile is sometimes liquid, and then the first type of bile appears, and sometimes it is thick, and then the second bile appears, that is, bile similar to egg yolk.
A lesser known bile is called burnt bile, which occurs in two ways. Firstly, bile can burn out on its own, then ash appears in it, and the liquid part of the bile is not separated from the golden part, on the contrary, the golden part is captured by the liquid part. This is the worst case, and this type of bile is called burnt.
Secondly, it happens that black bile penetrates yellow bile from the outside and mixes with it this is a more favorable case. Even if this type of bile is red, its color is still not pure and shiny on the contrary, this bile is more like blood, but it is liquid and has changed its color for many reasons.
As for bile, which has lost its naturalness in its substance, this includes bile, most of which originates in the liver, and bile, most of which originates in the stomach. Bile, most of which originates in the liver, exists in one variety. This is the liquid part of the blood, when the blood burns out and its thick part turns into black bile.
Bile, most of which originates from what is in the stomach, has two varieties: the color of leek and the color of verdigris. Leek-colored bile apparently originates from burnt-out yolk-shaped bile: when the yolk-shaped bile burns out, the burnout creates blackness in it, which is mixed with yellowness, and between these colors greenness is born.
As for verdigris-colored bile, it is apparently born from leek-colored bile, when this bile burns out so much that the liquids disappear from it, and it begins to turn white due to drying out. After all, heat first creates blackness in a wet body, then, when the heat begins to destroy the moisture, the blackness is removed, and if the heat dries excessively, it makes the object white. Observe this process on firewood: it first turns black like coal, then becomes gray like ash. This happens because heat produces blackness in a moist body, and whiteness in the opposite body, and cold produces whiteness in a moist body, and blackness in the opposite one. These judgments of mine about bile the color of leek and verdigris are only assumptions.
Bile the color of verdigris is the hottest type of bile, the nastiest and most deadly. They say that it arises from the substance of poisons.
As for black bile, it can be natural, but it can also be residual, unnatural. Natural black bile is the thick part of good blood, its heavy, settling part. The taste of this bile is sweetly tart when it is born in the liver, it is divided into two parts: one part is carried away with the blood, leaving for the sake of necessity and for the sake of benefit. The necessity is that bile must be mixed with the blood in the amount necessary to nourish each of those organs, in the nature of which a good part of bile should be present. Such are, for example, bones. As for the benefits, black bile strengthens and strengthens the blood, thickens it and prevents it from dissolving.
Part of the bile that goes to the spleen - and this is the part that the blood can do without - is also sent there for the sake of necessity and benefit. As for necessity, it can relate either to the whole body, in which case it is the need to cleanse the body of excess, or to a specific organ, in which case it is the need to nourish the spleen. As for the benefits of black bile, it is discovered when bile passes into the mouth of the stomach, and this benefit is twofold: firstly, bile strengthens the mouth of the stomach, strengthens it and makes it denser secondly, it irritates the mouth of the stomach with acid, arouses hunger in it and causes appetite.
Know that yellow bile that leaks into the gallbladder is bile that is not needed by the blood, and bile that leaks from the gallbladder is not necessary for the gallbladder. In the same way, black bile leaking into the spleen is bile that the blood can do without, and black bile oozing from the spleen is the bile that the spleen does not need. Just as the last-mentioned variety of yellow bile excites the force that pushes the juices from below, so the last-mentioned variety of black bile excites the force that pulls the juices from above. Blessed be Allah, the best of creators and the most just of judges!
As for unnatural black bile, such bile is formed not as a result of sedimentation and thickening, but as a result of ash content and fumes. The fact is that when moist things are mixed with earthy things, the earthy things are separated from them in two ways. This occurs either due to sedimentation - this happens, for example, with blood, when natural black bile is separated from it - or due to burnout, when the liquid part dissolves and the thick part remains. An example of this is blood and juices when residual black bile is separated from them, which is called “black bitterness”.
However, the ability to give sediment is inherent only in blood, because mucus, due to its viscosity, does not give any sediment or sludge, and yellow bile is liquid, there is little earthiness in it, it is constantly in motion and is separated in small quantities from the blood in the human body therefore, it also does not produce any significant sediment. When yellow bile is separated from the blood, it immediately rots or disperses throughout the body when it rots, its liquid part dissolves, and the thick part remains in the form of burnt black bile, which does not give sediment.
Residual black bile is sometimes the ash and waste of yellow bile and tastes bitter. The difference between her
and yellow bile, which we called "burnt" is that in yellow bile this ash exists as an impurity, and black bile is the ash that was released by itself when the black bile liquid dissolved.
And sometimes residual black bile is ash and mucus fumes. If the mucus was very liquid and watery, then its golden parts are salty, otherwise they are sour or tart.
Sometimes residual black bile is ash and blood fumes. This bile is salty and slightly sweet.
And sometimes residual black bile is the ash and fume of natural yellow bile. If yellow bile was liquid, then its ash and fume are very sour, like vinegar it boils right on the ground and has a sour smell that flies and other similar insects are afraid of. If the yellow bile was thick, then its ash and fume are less sour and have a slightly tart and bitter taste.
There are three varieties of bad black bile, namely, yellow bile, if it has burnt out and its liquid part has dissolved, and those two other varieties that are mentioned after it.
As for the mucous black bile, it harms more slowly and is not so bad.
When these four juices burn out, they are arranged in a certain order according to the degree of harmfulness: black bile is the worst, and black bile, formed from yellow bile, causes the most trouble and most likely harms, but it is best treated. As for the other two varieties, the one that is more sour is more harmful, but if caught from the very beginning, it is most treatable.
And the third variety does not boil so much on the ground, sticks less to the organs and slowly reaches a destructive effect, but it is more difficult to dissolve and ripen and is not so easy to treat with drugs.
These are the types of natural and residual juices. Galen said: “He is wrong who claims that the natural juice is blood, and nothing more, and that the remaining juices are leftovers and are completely unnecessary.” This is incorrect because if blood were the only juice that nourishes the organs, then they would undoubtedly be similar in nature and composition. But the bones would not be harder than meat if the hard substance of black bile were not mixed with the blood of the bones, and the brain would not be softer than meat if the soft mucous substance were not mixed with its blood. The blood itself also turns out to be mixed with various juices and is freed from them when it is removed and placed in a vessel. It decomposes right before our eyes into a part similar to foam, that is, yellow bile, into a part similar to the white of an egg, that is, mucus, into a part similar to sludge or sediment, that is, black bile, and also into a liquid part, that is, aqueous humor , the excess of which is excreted in the urine. Watery moisture does not belong to juices, for it is formed from drinks that are not nutritious it is needed only to liquefy food and carry it through. And juice is formed from foods and drinks that are nutritious. Our expression "nutritive" means something potentially similar to the body, and what is potentially similar to the human body is a mixed body, not a simple body, whereas water is a simple body.
Some people believe that bodily strength is a consequence of an abundance of blood, and weakness is a consequence of anemia. This is wrong. What matters here is what the body takes away from the blood, that is, its good quality.
Others are of the opinion that even if there are more or less juices than they should, but they are in such a quantitative ratio to each other as the human body requires, then health is maintained, however, this is not so. On the contrary, each juice must be present in a proportion unchanged in quantity, which is determined by itself, and not in relation to other juice, and at the same time maintain the required quantitative ratio with other juices. In matters related to juices, there are other questions that should be investigated not by doctors, for they do not belong to their art, but by philosophers. That's why we neglected them.