taking the windpipe for the proper passage of the speech and breath....

Upon this, all being silent, Florus began thus: What, shall we tamely
suffer Plato to be run down? By no means, said I, for if we desert him,
Homer must be in the same condition, for he is so far from denying the
windpipe to be the passage for our drink, that the dry food, in his
opinion, goes the same way. For these are his words:--

From his gullet [Greek omitted] flowed
The clotted wine and undigested flesh.
("Odyssey," ix. 373.)

Unless perchance you will say that the Cyclops, as he had but one eye,
so had but one passage for his food and voice; or would have [Greek
omitted] to signify weasand, not windpipe, as both all the ancients and
moderns use it. I produce this because it is really his meaning, not
because I want other testimonies, for Plato hath store of learned and
sufficient men to join with him. For not to mention Eupolis, who in his
play called the "Flatterers" says,

Protagoras bids us drink a lusty bowl,
That when the Dog appears our lungs may still be moist;

or elegant Eratosthenes, who says,

And having drenched his lungs with purest wine;

even Euripides, somewhere expressly saying,

The wine passed through the hollows of the lungs,

shows that he saw better and clearer than Erasistratus. For he saw that
the lungs have cavities and pores, through which the liquids pass. For
the breath in expiration hath no need of pores, but that the liquids and
those things which pass with them might go through, it is made like a
strainer and full of pores. Besides, sir, as to the example of gruel
which you proposed, the lungs can discharge themselves of the thicker
parts together with the thin, as well as the stomach. For our stomach
is not, as some fancy, smooth and slippery, but full of asperities, in
which it is probable that the thin and small particles are lodged,
and so not taken quite down. But neither this nor the other can
we positively affirm; for the curious contrivance of Nature in her
operation is too hard to be explained; nor can we be particularly exact
upon those instruments (I mean the spirit and the heat) which she makes
use of in her works. But besides those we have mentioned to confirm
Plato's opinion, let us produce Philistion of Locri, very ancient and
very famous physician, and Hippocrates too, with his disciple Dioxippus;
for they thought of no other passage but that which P