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. But so far as blood becomes hot from some
external influence, it is not hot essentially.
As with hot and cold, so also is it with solid and fluid. We can
therefore understand how some substances are hot and fluid so long
as they remain in the living body, but become perceptibly cold and
coagulate so soon as they are separated from it; while others are
hot and consistent while in the body, but when withdrawn under a
change to the opposite condition, and become cold and fluid. Of the
former blood is an example, of the latter bile; for while blood
solidifies when thus separated, yellow bile under the same
circumstances becomes more fluid. We must attribute to such substances
the possession of opposite properties in a greater or less degree.
In what sense, then, the blood is hot and in what sense fluid, and
how far it partakes of the opposite properties, has now been fairly
explained. Now since everything that grows must take nourishment,
and nutriment in all cases consists of fluid and solid substances, and
since it is by the force of heat that these are concocted and changed,
it follows that all living things, animals and plants alike, must on
this account, if on no other, have a natural source of heat. This
natural heat, moreover, must belong to many parts, seeing that the
organs by which the various elaborations of the food are effected
are many in number. For first of all there is the mouth and the
parts inside the mouth, on which the first share in the duty clearly
devolves, in such animals at least as live on food which requires
disintegration
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