osites, fail to harmonize. That
comes to pass when one of these elements assumes undue proportions or
moves from its proper place. The second cause of disease lies in the
vitiation of those components of the body which, though formed out of
the simple elements, have coalesced in such a manner as to have a
specific character of their own, such as blood, entrails, bone,
marrow, and the various substances made from the blending of each of
these. Thirdly, the concretion in the body of various juices, turbid
vapours, and dense humours is the last provocative of sickness.

50. Of these causes that which contributes most to epilepsy, the
disease of which I set out to speak, is a condition when the flesh is
so melted by the noxious influence of fire as to form a thick and
foaming humour. This generates a vapour, and the heat of the air thus
compressed within the body causes a white and eruptive ferment. If
this ferment succeeds in escaping from the body, it is dispersed in a
manner that is repulsive rather than dangerous. For it causes an
eczema to break out upon the surface of the skin of the breast and
mottles it with all kinds of blotches. But the person to whom this
happens is never again attacked with epilepsy, and so he rids himself
of a most sore disease of the spirit at the price of a slight
disfigurement of the body. But if, on the other hand, this dangerous
corruption[16] be contained within the body and mingle with the black
bile, and so run fiercely through every vein, and then working its way
upwards to the head flood the brain with its destructive stream, it
straightway weakens that royal part of man's spirit which is endowed
with the power of reason and is enthroned in the head of man, that is
its citadel and palace. For it overwhelms and throws into confusion
those channels of divinity and paths of wisdom. During sleep it makes
less havoc, but when men are full of meat and wine it makes its
presence somewhat unpleasantly felt by a choking sensation, the herald
of epilepsy. But if it reaches such strength as to attack the heads of
men when they are wide awake, then their minds grow dull with a sudden
cloud of stupefaction and they fall to the ground, their bodies
swooning as in death, their spirit fainting within them. Men of our
race have styled it not only the 'Great sickness' and the 'Comitial
sickness', but also the 'Divine sickness', in this resembling the
Greeks, who call it [Greek: hiera nosos], the holy s