Kitap 17
11
These are the views of the physician Erasistratus, as opposed to Plato. But Plutarch, in his Symposiacs, vii. 1. 3. says that the originator of Plato's opinion was Hippocrates, and that the same opinion was held by Philistion of Locris Frag. 7, p. 112, Wellmann. and Dioxippus the pupil of Hippocrates, famous physicians of the olden time; also that the epiglottis, of which Erasistratus spoke, was not placed where it is to prevent anything that we drank from flowing into the windpipe; for fluid seems necessary and serviceable for refreshing and moistening the lungs; but it was placed there as a kind of controller and arbiter, to exclude or admit whatever was necessary for the health of the body; to keep away all foods from the windpipe and turn them to the stomach, but to divide what is drunk between the stomach and the lungs. And that part which ought to be admitted into the lungs through the windpipe the epiglottis does not let through rapidly and all at once, but when it has been checked and held back, as it were by a kind of dam, it allows it to pass gradually and little by little, and turns aside all the remainder into the other tube leading to the stomach.
12
Of ignoble subjects, called by the Greeks a)/docoi, or unexpected, argued by Favorinus for the sake of practice.
