[Essays and Miscellanies by Plutarch]@TWC D-Link bookEssays and Miscellanies BOOK VI 9/33
Just so it happens to persons in a fever, after the heat of the disease is over, and likewise to those who go to sleep thirsty.
For in these, sleep draws the moisture to the middle parts, and equally distributes it amongst the rest, satisfying them all.
But, I pray, what kind of transfiguration of the passages is this which causes hunger and thirst? For my part, I know no other distinction of the pores but 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.
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