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THE PROBLEMS OF

ALEXANDER APHRODISEUS

Q. Why doth the sun make a man black and dirt white, wax soft and dirt hard?  A. By reason of the disposition of the substance that doth suffer.  All humours, phlegm excepted, when heated above measure, do seem black about the skin; and dirt, being full either of saltpetre, or salt liquor, when the sun hath consumed its dregs and filth, doth become white again.  When the sun hath stirred up and drawn the humidity of the wax, it is softened; but in the dirt, the sun doth consume the humidity, which is very much and makes it hard.

Q. Why are round ulcers hard to be cured?  A. Because they are bred of a sharp choler, which eats and gnaws; and because it doth run, dropping and gnawing, it makes a round ulcer; for which reason it requires dry medicines, as physicians assert.

Q. Why is honey sweet to all men, but to such as have jaundice?  A. Because they have much bitter choler all over their bodies, which abounds in the tongue; whence it happens when they eat honey the humours are stirred, and the taste itself, by the bitterness of choler, causes an imagination that the honey is bitter.

Q. Why doth water cast on serpents, cause them to fly?  A. Because they are dry and cold by nature, having but little blood, and therefore fly from excessive coldness.

Q. Why doth an egg break if roasted, and not if boiled?  A. When moisture comes near the fire, it is heated very much, and so breeds wind, which being put up in little room, forces its way out, and breaks the shell:  the like happens in tubs or earthen vessels when new wine is put into them; too much phlegm breaks the shell of an egg in roasting; it is the same with earthen pots too much heated; wherefore some people wet an egg when they intend to roast it.  Hot water, by its softness, doth dissipate its humidity by little and little, and dissolves it through the thinness and passages of the shell.

Q. Why do men wink in the act of copulation, and find a little alteration in all other senses?  A. Because, being overcome by the effect of that pleasure, they do comprehend it the better.

Q. Why have children gravel breeding in their bladders, and old men in their kidneys and veins?  A. Because children have straight passages in their kidneys, and an earthly thick humour is thrust with violence by the urine to the bladder, which hath wide conduits or passages, that give room for the urine and humour whereof gravel is engendered, which waxes thick, and seats itself, as the manner of it is.  In old men it is the reverse, for they have wide passages of the veins, back and kidneys, that the urine may pass away, and the earthly humour congeal and sink down; the colour of the gravel shows the humour whereof the stone comes.