Aristotle's works:: Containing the Master-piece, Directions for Midwives, and Counsel and Advice to Child-bearing Women with Various Useful Remedies
Aristotle · en
Q. Why do nurses rock and move their children when they would draw them
to sleep? A. To the end that the humours being scattered by moving, may
move the brains; but those of more years cannot endure this.
Q. Why doth oil, being drank, cause one to vomit, and especially yellow
choler? A. Because, being light, and ascending upwards, it provoketh the
nutriment in the stomach, and lifteth it up, and so the stomach being
grieved, summoneth the ejective virtue to vomit, and especially choler,
because that is light, and consisteth of subtle parts, and therefore the
sooner carried upward; for when it is mingled with any moist thing, it
runneth into the highest room.
Q. Why doth not oil mingle with moist things? A. Because, being pliant,
soft, and thick in itself, it cannot be divided into parts, and so
cannot be mingled; neither if it be put on earth can it enter into it.
Q. Why are water and oil frozen in cold weather, and wine and vinegar
are not? A. Because that oil, being without quality, and fit to be
compounded with any thing, is cold quickly, and so extremely, that it is
most cold. Water, being cold of nature, doth easily freeze when it is
made colder than its own nature. Wine being hot, and of subtle parts,
suffereth no freezing.
Q. Why do contrary things in quality bring forth the same effect? A.
That which is moist is hardened and bound alike by heat and cold. Snow
and liquid do freeze with cold; a plaster, and gravel in the bladder,
are made dry with heat. The effect indeed is the same, but by two divers
actions; the heat doth consume and eat the abundance of moisture; but
the cold stopping and shutting with its overmuch thickness, doth wring
out the filthy humidity, like as a sponge wrung with the hand doth cast
out the water which it hath in the pores or small passages.
Q. Why doth a shaking or quivering seize us oftentimes when any fearful
matter doth happen, as a great noise or crack made, the sudden downfall
of water, or the fall of a large tree? A. Because that oftentimes the
humours being digested and consumed by time, and made thin and weak, all
the heat, vehemently, suddenly, and sharply flying into the inward part
of the body, consumeth the humours which cause the disease.
Q. Why do steel glasses shine so clearly? A. Because they are lined in
the inside with white lead, whose nature is shining, and being put to
glass, which is lucid and transparent, doth shine much more; and casts
its beams through its passages, and without the body of the glass; and
by that means the glass is very shining and clear.
Q. Why do we see ourselves in glasses and clear water? A. Because the
quality of the sight, passing into the bright bodies by reflection, doth
return again on the beam of the eyes, as the image of him who looketh on
it.