Book 17
11
BOTH Plutarch Sympos. vii. 1. and certain other learned men have written that Plato was criticized by the famous physician Erasistratus, p. 194, Fuchs. because he said Tim. 44, p. 91, A; 31, p. 70, c. that drink went to the lungs and having sufficiently moistened them, flowed through them, since they are somewhat porous, and from there passed into the bladder. They declared that the originator of that error was Alcaeus, who wrote Frag. 39, Bergk4. in his poems: Wet now the lungs with wine; the dog-star shines, but that Erasistratus himself declared pp. 184 ff. and 194, Fuchs. that there were two little canals, so to speak, or pipes, and that they extended downward from the throat; that through one of these all food and drink passed and went into the stomach, and from there were carried into the belly, which the Greeks call h( ka/tw koili/a. That there it is reduced and digested and then the drier excrement passes into the bowels, which the Greeks call ko/lon, The three places referred to are the stomach, the small intestine and the large intestine. Neither the Greek nor the Latin terms are always used consistently. and the moisture through the kidneys into the bladder. But through the other tube, which the Greeks call the traxei=a a)rthri/a, or rough windpipe, the breath passes from the lips into the lungs, and from there goes back into the mouth and nostrils, and along this same road a passage for the voice also is made; and lest drink or drier food, which ought to pass into the stomach, should fall from the mouth and slip into that tube through which the breath goes back and forth, and by such an accident the path of the breath should be cut off, there has been placed at these two openings by a kind of helpful device of nature, a sort of movable valve which is called the epiglottis, which alternately shuts and opens. This epiglottis, while we are eating and drinking, covers and protects the rough windpipe, in order that no particle of food or drink may fall into that path, so to speak, of the rising and falling breath; and on that account no moisture passes into the lungs, since the opening of the windpipe itself is well protected.
