Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"Plutarch
Philosophy
Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 5) : $b Comprising all his works collected under the title of "Morals"
Plutarch
Classical literature; Essays; Ethics; Philosophy
From his gullet (φάρυγος) flowed
The clotted wine and undigested flesh.[94]
Unless perchance you will say that the Cyclops, as he had but one eye,
so had but one passage for his food and voice; or would have φάρυγξ to
signify weasand, not windpipe, as both all the ancients and moderns use
it. I produce this because it is really his meaning, not because I want
other testimonies, for Plato hath store of learned and sufficient men
to join with him. For not to mention Eupolis, who in his play called
the Flatterers says,
Protagoras bids us drink a lusty bowl,
That when the Dog appears our lungs may still be moist;
or elegant Eratosthenes, who says,
And having drenched his lungs with purest wine;
even Euripides, somewhere expressly saying,
The wine passed through the hollows of the lungs,
shows that he saw better and clearer than Erasistratus. For he saw that
the lungs have cavities and pores, through which the liquids pass. For
the breath in expiration hath no need of pores, but that the liquids
and those things which pass with them might go through, it is made
like a strainer and full of pores. Besides, sir, as to the influence
of gruel which you proposed, the lungs can discharge themselves of
the thicker parts together with the thin, as well as the stomach. For
our stomach is not, as some fancy, smooth and slippery, but full of
asperities, in which it is probable that the thin and small particles
are lodged, and so not taken quite down. But neither this nor the other
can we positively affirm; for the curious contrivance of Nature in her
operations is too hard to be explained; nor can we be particularly
exact upon those instruments (I mean the spirit and the heat) which
she makes use of in her works. But besides those we have mentioned
to confirm Plato’s opinion, let us produce Philistion of Locri, a
very ancient and famous physician, and Hippocrates too, with his
pupil Dioxippus; for they thought of no other passage but that which
Plato mentions. Dioxippus knew very well that precious talk of the
epiglottis, but says, that when we feed, the moist parts are about that
separated from the dry, and the first are carried down the windpipe,
the other down the weasand; and that the windpipe receives no parts
of the food, but the stomach, together with the dry parts, receives
some portion of the liquids. And this is probable, for the epiglottis
lies over the windpipe, as a fence and strainer, that the drink may
get in by little and little, lest descending in a large full stream,
it stop the breath and endanger the life. And therefore birds have no
epiglottis, because they do not sup or lap when they drink, but take up
a little in their beak, and let it run gently down their windpipe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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