in respect of their number or that some of
them are shut, others open. As for those that are shut, they can neither
receive meat nor drink; and as for those that are open, they make an
empty space, which is nothing but a want of that which Nature requires.
Thus, sir, when men dye cloth, the liquor in which they dip it hath very
sharp and abstersive particles; which, consuming and scouring off all
the matter that filled the pores, make the cloth more apt to receive the
dye, because its pores are empty and want something to fill them up.

QUESTION III. WHAT IS THE REASON THAT HUNGER IS ALLAYED BY DRINKING, BUT
THIRST INCREASED BY EATING?

THE HOST, PLUTARCH, AND OTHERS.

After we had gone thus far, the master of the feast told the company
that the former points were reasonably well discussed; and waiving at
present the discourse concerning the evacuation and repletion of the
pores, he requested us to fall upon another question, that is, how it
comes to pass that hunger is stayed by drinking, when, on the contrary,
thirst is more violent after eating. Those who assign the reason to be
in the pores seem with a great deal of ease and probability, though not
with so much truth, to explain the thing. For seeing the pores in all
bodies are of different sorts and sizes, the more capacious receive both
dry and humid nourishment, the lesser take in drink, not meat; but the
vacuity of the former causes hunger, of the latter thirst. Hence it is
that men that thirst are never better after they have eaten, the pores
by reason of their straitness denying admittance to grosser nourishment,
and the want of suitable supply still remaining. But after hungry men
have drunk, the moisture enters the greater pores, fills the empty
spaces, and in part assuages the violence of the hunger.

Of this effect, said I, I do not in the least doubt, but I do not
approve of the reason they give for it. For if any one should admit
these pores (which some are so unreasonably fond of) to be in the flesh,
he must needs make it a very soft, loose, flabby substance; and that the
same parts do not receive the meat and drink, but that they run through
different canals and strainers in them, seems to me to be a very strange
and unaccountable opinion. For the moisture mixes with the dry food, and
by the assistance of the natural heat and spirits cuts the nourishment
far smaller than any cleaver or chopping-knife, to the end that every
part of it may be exac