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Essays and Miscellanies

BOOK VII
3/46

For if anything by chance gets down that way, we are troubled with retching and coughing till it is thrown up again.

And this epiglottis being framed so that it may fall on either side, whilst we speak it shuts the weasand, but when we eat or drink it falls upon the windpipe, and so secures the passage for our breath.

Besides, we know that those who drink by little and little are looser than those who drink greedily and large draughts; for in the latter the very force drives it into their bladders, but in the former it stays, and by its stay is mixed with and moistens the meat thoroughly.

Now this could not be, if in the very drinking the liquid was separated from the dry food; but the effect follows, because we mix and convey them both together, using (as Erasistratus phraseth it) the liquid as a vehicle for the dry.
Nicias having done, Protogenes the grammarian subjoined, that Homer was the first that observed the stomach was the vessel of the food, and the windpipe (which the ancients called [Greek omitted] of the breath, and upon the same account they called those who had loud voices [Greek omitted]).

And when he describes how Achilles killed Hector, he says, He pierced his weasand, where death enters soon; and adds, But not his windpipe, so that he could speak, ("Iliad," xxii.


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