Message #168477

[Bathos]

Imperfect boiling is the form of inconcoction opposed to boiling.
Now the opposite of boiling properly so called is an inconcoction
of the undetermined matter in a body due to lack of heat in the surrounding
liquid. (Lack of heat implies, as we have pointed out, the presence
of cold.) The motion which causes imperfect boiling is different from
that which causes boiling, for the heat which operates the concoction
is driven out. The lack of heat is due either to the amount of cold
in the liquid or to the quantity of moisture in the object undergoing
the process of boiling. Where either of these conditions is realized
the heat in the surrounding liquid is too great to have no effect
at all, but too small to carry out the process of concocting uniformly
and thoroughly. Hence things are harder when they are imperfectly
boiled than when they are boiled, and the moisture in them more distinct
from the solid parts. So much for the definition and causes of boiling
and imperfect boiling.

Broiling is concoction by dry foreign heat. Hence if a man were to
boil a thing but the change and concoction in it were due, not to
the heat of the liquid but to that of the fire, the thing will have
been broiled and not boiled when the process has been carried to completion:
if the process has gone too far we use the word 'scorched' to describe
it. If the process leaves the thing drier at the end the agent has
been dry heat. Hence the outside is drier than the inside, the opposite
being true of things boiled. Where the process is artificial, broiling
is more difficult than boiling, for it is difficult to heat the inside
and the outside uniformly, since the parts nearer to the fire are
the first to get dry and consequently get more intensely dry. In this
way the outer pores contract and the moisture in the thing cannot
be secreted but is shut in by the closing of the pores. Now broiling
and boiling are artificial processes, but the same general kind of
thing, as we said, is found in nature too. The affections produced
are similar though they lack a name; for art imitates nature. For
instance, the concoction of food in the body is like boiling, for
it takes place in a hot and moist medium and the agent is the heat
of the body. So, too, certain forms of indigestion are like imperfect
boiling. And it is not true that animals are generated in the concoction
of food, as some say. Really they are generated in the excretion which
putrefies in the lower belly, and they ascend afterwards. For concoction
goes on in the upper belly but the excretion putrefies in the lower:
the reason for this has been explained elsewhere.