II. Revisión Bibliográfica
II.4 La Esponjicultura
II.4.1 Cultivo de esponjas en Cuba y algunas consideraciones económicas
This part will explore the micro-/macrocosmic relationship between breath, bodily fluids and internal heat within the body and the parallel relationship between winds, waters, and heat in the natural environment. This relationship is important not only for understanding how air affected the body but is also important for understanding how air entered the body and its function once inside. Frixione has explored the intimate links between heat and air in his recent work and van der Eijk has discussed
365 Erotian notes in his Hippocratic Lexicon that in Homer ἀήρ is used for mist and a lower section of
air that does not extend past the height of a temple: Erotian, Hippocratic Lexicon, 45, l.3-5. For αἰθήρ
in Homer see Iliad, 8.556-560; Lloyd (2007) 137.
366
For a discussion of these terms and their meaning in Homer see Padel (1992) 27-32.
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the link between the body, the blood and the πνεῦµα in fifth and fourth century thought.368 However, the relationship between air, heat, and moisture and how they affect each other in both the natural environment and the human body has not been explored to any length.369
It will be useful first to discuss some of the main terms used for air, wind, and breaths since the terms used can be different when air is inside the body to those used for air outside the body and some terms have connotations associated with heat and moisture. The words ἀήρ (or ἠήρ), ἄνεµος, πνεῦµα, and φῦσα are usually used to denote air both inside and outside the body in our period.370 The term ἀήρ is
generally used for the air outside the body in the natural world and is usually the term used for the element air in natural philosophy.371 The term ἄνεµος is the word for wind outside the body but can also be used to denote winds within the body.372 Again, πνεῦµα can mean breath within the body and breath outside the body. Later, this word is identified with the soul of a human and the world soul in Stoic
doctrine.373
The term φῦσα in the Hippocratic Corpus can mean breath within the body but again can be used for the outside world. For example, it is the word used for bellows.374 Indeed, φῦσα is the word that the author of On Breaths uses as the title
368
Frixione (2013) 505-28; van der Eijk (2005) 119-135.
369 Lonie touches on it in his commentary on the Hippocratic text On the Nature of the Child: Lonie
(1981) 148-9.
370 Erotian notes that ἀήρ is used for mist or a lower stratum of air in the natural world and for breaths
within the human body: Erotian, Hippocratic Lexicon, 45, l.2-6. LSJ s.v. ἄνεµος, πνεῦµα, and φῦσα. For ἀήρ see the discussion of the words used in On Breaths in the main body of the text on this page.
The term πνεῦµα is the most common term used in the Hippocratic Corpus see Index Hippocraticus
s.v. πνεῦµα.
371
Aristotle, Meteorology, I, 2 339a16; Lloyd (2007) 137. Lloyd also notes that Empedocles does not use this term, instead he generally uses the word αἰθήρ.
372 Lloyd (2007) 136; Hippocrates, On Diseases of Women II, 8.358.19; On the Nature of Women, 64
Potter=7.400.11. Here the uterus becomes inflated with wind: ἀνεµόοµαι.
373
Lloyd (2007) 137 -8.
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for his treatise. This author makes the distinction between ἀήρ and φῦσα stating that
ἀήρ is what exists in the natural world outside the body, but when it enters the body, it is φῦσα and both are types of πνεῦµα.375 He goes on to describe the wind (ἄνεµος) as ‘...a flowing and a current of air’ (Hippocrates, On Breaths, 3, 5.106.4 Jouanna = L6.94.4).376 However, this author sometimes uses these terms interchangeably using
ἀήρ when, going by his distinction, he should use φῦσα.377
In other treatises such as On Regimen I and II, the author does not make this distinction between air within the body and air outside it but πνεῦµα refers both to air inside the body and the wind outside.378 The same is true in On the Sacred
Disease where the author uses πνεῦµα to describe winds outside the body379 and breath that is taken into the body.380 Moreover, in the same treatise the word ἀήρ is also used to describe air outside the body and within the body.381 Thus, there is no agreement and often no clear distinction between terms used to denote air within the body and air outside it.
Some of the terms discussed above not only have connotations of wind or breath but also denote forms of precipitation or moisture. For example, in Homer,
ἀήρ can refer to clouds or mist.382 In Hippocratic texts, there is sometimes a
suggestion that πνεῦµα is moist in some way and needs moisture in order to nourish
375 Hippocrates, On Breaths, 3, l.4-5 Jones =L6.94.1-2.; Lloyd (2007) 138.
376 Craik dates this treatise to the final decades of the fifth century making it roughly contemporary
with On the Sacred Disease and other important Hippocratic works for the nature and effects of air: (2015) 102. On Breaths has parallels with Presocratic works see Craik (2015) 101-2 and Jouanna (1988) 106 n.3.
377 Hippocrates, On Breaths, 7, l.16 Jones=L6.100.4; Lloyd (2007) 138.
378 Hippocrates, On Regimen I, 10 l.9, 13 Jones=L6.484.22 and 6.488.14-20, and On Regimen II, 38
l.1-2 Jones=L6.530.11-12; On the Sacred Disease, 16 l.1 Jones =L.6.384.4.
379 Hippocrates, On the Sacred Disease, 19 Jones =L6.390.9-392.4.
380 Hippocrates, On the Sacred Disease, 7 and 16 Jones =L.6.368.1-9 and 384.4-386.14.
381 Air outside the body: On the Sacred Disease, 7, l.3 Jones=L6.368.2 and air inside the body: 10,
l.21-2 Jones=L6.19-20.
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itself.383 In Aristotle, the term ἀτµίς is used to denote the moist exhalations and literally means a moist vapour or steam, which causes the winds among other phenomena.384 Correspondingly, words associated with air can also have associations with fire. For example, the term αἰθήρ was employed to refer to elemental air by Empedocles, and Plato used αἰθήρ to refer to the brighter, clearer air, which he distinguished from the misty ἀήρ.385 This term usually refers to the heavenly sphere, which was thought to be fiery or hot by early philosophers and physicians.386 Indeed, Anaxagoras supposedly used the term αἰθήρ to denote fire rather than air according to Aristotle.387 These different meanings of words used for air are significant since they show us what other factors might be associated with a certain term. Indeed, from these examples there is the suggestion that there were links between fire or heat, breath or air, and moisture.
For ancient philosophers, a body of air lay between the earth and its waters and the often fiery heavenly sphere. This atmospheric zone was the place where waters became air and air became fiery or turned back into water. For example, Anaximenes posited the theory that everything came from air and that, as it became thicker, it became clouds and water and eventually earth, but as it became more rarefied, it became fiery.388 In the theories of Anaximander, the fiery heavenly bodies were enclosed in a sort of air-mist suggesting that a type of moist air
surrounded the hot and fiery parts of the heavenly sphere.389 Plato believes that air is
383
Hippocrates, On Regimen II 38, l.3-8 in particular for the idea that winds arise from moisture and Hippocrates, On Regimen II, 37, l.22-6 for the idea that the wind attracts moisture to itself when it is dry to nourish itself. See below p.131 on the nature of the south wind for the idea that winds carry rains or are conductive to moisture in the Hippocratic Corpus.
384
Aristotle, Meteorology II, 4 361a22-25.
385 Empedocles: DK31 B98=KRS 373 and DK31 B115=KRS 401; Plato, Timaeus, 58d.
386 Hippocrates, On Fleshes, 2, l.5-6 Potter=L8.58412-13. Aristotle, Meteorology I, 3 340b29-31.
387 Aristotle, On the Heavens I, 3 270b24-5 cf. Anaxagoras: DK59 B15=KRS 489; Lloyd (2007) 137.
388
Anaximenes: KRS 141 = Hippolytus, Refutation of the Herasies, I, 7, 1.
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generated from water and when ignited becomes fire but when condensed becomes cloud and mist and then becomes water again.390 Aristotle maintains that air is what lies between the earth and its waters and the heavens but it has two layers. The layer next to the earth is moist and cold since it is closest to the water and the layer closest to the heavens is dry and hot because it is closest to the divine αἰθήρ, the rotation of which causes the inflammation of air.391 In the Hippocratic treatise On Fleshes, once the divine heat had separated and ascended to the heavenly sphere, air lay between it and the earth.392 Thus, air was very much an intermediary substance between the fiery heavenly sphere and the terrestrial sphere. Owing to this, the air has links with the hot heavenly sphere and the moisture on earth and serves as a medium through which change occurs.
In Aristotle’s theories air is generated from water393 and wind blows from ‘marshy districts of the earth.’394 He gives a more full explanation of what causes the winds in this passage:
We recognise two kinds of exhalation (ἀναθυµίασις), one moist, the other dry. The former is called vapour (ἀτµίς): for the other there is no general name but we must call it a sort of smoke (καπνός)...Now when the sun in its circular course approaches, it draws up by its heat the moist evaporation (τὸ
ὑγρόν)...but there is a great quantity of fire (πῦρ) and heat (θερµότης) in the earth, and the sun not only draws up the moisture (ὑγρὸν) that lies on the surface of it, but warms and dries the earth itself. Consequently, since there are two kinds of exhalation...That in which moisture predominates is the
390
Plato, Timaeus, 49c.
391 Aristotle, Meteorology, I, 3.340a19-241a36; it should be noted that the αἰθήρ itself is not fiery: see
above p.60 n.181.
392 Hippocrates, On Fleshes, 2, l.3-10 Potter =L.8.584.10-12. 393
Aristotle, Meteorology, I, 3.340a25.
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source of rain...while the dry one is the source and substance of all winds.395 (Aristotle, Meteorology, II, 4 359b29-360a14)
Though wind is a type of smoky exhalation for Aristotle that is hot and dry, the exhalation still arises from the moisture that is contained in the earth. For example, in numerous places within the Meteorology, Aristotle mentions how this smoky exhalation rises from the earth when the sun heats moist earth after rains have fallen.396 This exhalation is dryer in nature because it has come from the earth and not from a body of water such as a lake or a river. The air also has a close connection to the fiery part of the heavenly sphere for Aristotle because the air closest to the movement of the αἰθήρ has the potential to become fire.397
In the Hippocratic treatise On Regimen II, the author also believes that the winds arise from moisture:
All winds have a power of moistening and cooling both animal and vegetable bodies for this reason; because all these winds must come either from snow or ice or places severely frozen, or from rivers or lakes, or from moist and cold land.398 (Hippocrates, On Regimen II, 38, 160.2-5 Joly-Byl =L6.530.12- 16) 399 395 ἔστιγὰρδύ’ εἴδητῆςἀναθυµιάσεως, ὥςφαµεν, ἡµὲνὑγρὰἡδὲξηρά· καλεῖταιδ’ ἡµὲνἀτµίς, ἡ δὲτὸµὲνὅλονἀνώνυµος, τῷδ’ ἐπὶµέρουςἀνάγκηχρωµένουςκαθόλουπροσαγορεύειναὐτὴνοἷον καπνόν…φεροµένουδὴτοῦἡλίουκύκλῳ, καὶὅτανµὲνπλησιάζῃ, τῇθερµότητιἀνάγοντοςτὸ ὑγρόν…ὑπάρχειδ’ ἐντῇγῇπολὺπῦρκαὶπολλὴθερµότης, καὶὁἥλιοςοὐµόνοντὸἐπιπολάζοντῆς γῆςὑγρὸνἕλκει, ἀλλὰκαὶτὴνγῆναὐτὴνξηραίνειθερµαίνων· τῆςδ’ ἀναθυµιάσεως….τούτωνδ’ἡµὲν ὑγροῦπλέονἔχουσαπλῆθοςἀναθυµίασιςἀρχὴτοῦὑοµένουὕδατόςἐστιν… ἡδὲξηρὰτῶν πνευµάτωνἀρχὴκαὶφύσιςπάντων. 396
Aristotle, Meteorology, II, 4 360a25; 4 360b31;5 361b34-362a6.
397 Aristotle, Meteorology, I, 3 340b26-9 and 341a1-3.
398Φύσινµὲνἔχειτὰπνεύµαταπάνταὑγραίνεινκαὶψύχειντάτεσώµατατῶνζώωνκαὶτὰφυόµενα
ἐκτῆςγῆςδιὰτάδε· ἀνάγκηἐστὶτὰπνεύµαταταῦταπάνταπνέεινἀπὸχιόνοςκαὶκρυστάλλουκαὶ
πάγωνἰσχυρῶνκαὶποταµῶνκαὶλιµνέωνκαὶγῆςὑγρανθείσηςκαὶψυχρανθείσης.
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It is significant that winds were thought to originate from the moist parts of the earth by the Hippocratic physicians since many held the view that the different strength of waters in particular were affected by the winds.400 The author of On Regimen II describes how winds can lose their moisture over mountainous regions and they then become dry, rare and hot and attract moisture again.401 This makes the wind parching since the heat of it draws moisture from everything.
The same types of processes involving breath, heat and moisture in the natural world, are also found in the human body. The best example of this can be seen in the process of breathing. As heat attracts air or breath in the natural world so the internal heat attracts breath into the body or controls it.402 Frixione is right, however, when he argues that heat does not have a complete dominance over breath in the heat-breath relationship since breath can constrain fire by taking the moisture for itself as nourishment or it cools the inner heat which we see in On Regimen I and also in On the Sacred Disease.403 In On Regimen I, breath (πνεῦµα) is drawn to the heat from the fire in the embryo suggesting that this is how the body takes it in.404 In the Timaeus, though breathing largely takes place through a horror vacui effect, the air is also drawn into the body by the natural heat through the nostrils and the skin.405 In Aristotle, the heart is the centre of the natural heat and it behaves like bellows. As the heat increases the heart expands and the expansion causes air to rush in. The
400 Hippocrates, Airs, Waters, Places, 9, l.14-16 Jones =L2.38.5-6.
401 Hippocrates, On Regimen II, 37, l.22-31 Jones =L6.528.15-530.1
402
For an example of the inner heat controlling the breath see Hippocrates, On Fleshes, 6 Potter =L8.592.1-594.5.
403 Frixione (2012) 517-8; Hippocrates, On Regimen I, 13 Jones =L6.488.14-20; On the Sacred
Disease, 10, l.19-20 Jones =L.6.372.18-19.
404
Hippocrates, On Regimen I, 9, l.4-6 Jones=L6.482.15-17.
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cooling effect of the air causes the heart to decrease again and the air is expelled now it is warmed.406
A similar relationship between heat and breath can be seen in On the Nature
of the Child where the author, while describing how an embryo is formed states,
‘...everything that is warmed sends out breath, and draws back fresh, cold air in return, from which it is nourished.’ (Hippocrates, On the Nature of the Child, 1 Potter= L7.488.7-8) Here, cold air is taken in which nourishes the embryo and when it is warm it is expelled. In addition, the author states that everything that is warm draws cold air to itself implying that this happens in the natural world too.
In this treatise, breath is nourishing and a similar idea can be seen in On
Regimen I where moisture is considered nourishing in the human body.407 The breath
is attracted into the body by the heat of the internal fire and when the breath enters the body it constrains the fire by taking away the nourishing water.408 The same process occurs in the natural world according to On Regimen II where the winds bring moisture to everything and cool everything because they blow from waters, ice, and snow but the winds can also take moisture away from bodies when it is hot and dry in order to nourish itself.409
Once inside the body, the breath often shares the vessels with the blood.410 This idea can be seen in On the Nature of Bones where the vessels contain both
406 Aristotle, Parts of Animals, III, 4 666a2-4.; Aristotle, On Youth, Old Age, Life and Death, and
Respiration, 27(21) 480a23-480b5; Furley and Wilkie (1984) 17-18.
407 Hippocrates, On Regimen I, 3, l.9-10 Jones =L6.472.20-21. 408
Hippocrates, On Regimen I, 13 Jones =L6.488.14-20.
409 Hippocrates, On Regimen II, 37, l.23-6 Jones =L6.528.16-19 and 38, l.37-8 Jones =L6.532.10-11
and 38, l.3-8 Jones = L6.53012-16. These treatises are roughly contemporary, both dated to the late fifth century: Craik (2015)118 and 275.
410
Hippocrates, On the Sacred Disease, 10, l.51-4 Jones =L6.374.18-20; On Breaths, 10, l.5-10 Jones=L6.104.19-22.
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blood and breath.411 The contemporary philosophers Empedocles and Diogenes of Apollonia also put forward ideas about breathing that involved the blood and the blood vessels.412 In the theories of Empedocles, as air is taken into the body the blood retreats from the vessels pushed back by the air, as the air goes out the blood then runs back into the veins. Empedocles uses an image of a clepsydra to
demonstrate this process where water acts like the blood in the body.413 Diogenes believed that air contained thought in the bodyand that if all air-like substance retreated from the veins then death ensued suggesting that air shared the veins with the blood.414
A similar phenomenon can be seen in the natural world where breath is found in water. For example, in On the Nature of the Child, the author explains how breath (πνεῦµα) moves in and out of water:
Now in summer the earth is rarefied and light and contains water in it, and the water flows downwards. As this water flows, it constantly exhales one breath of vapour after another, and these exhalations pass through the light, rarefied earth and produce coldness in it, and also cool the water itself...415 (Hippocrates, On the Nature of the Child, 14 Potter =L7.522.15-20)416
411 Hippocrates, On the Nature of Bones, 11 Potter=L9.182.3-4. This treatise is dated to the late fifth
century: Craik (2015) 229.
412 Both flourished in the mid-late fifth century. See Kirk, Raven, and Schofield (1983) 434 for
Diogenes and p.81 n.248 for Empedocles.
413 Empedocles: DK31 B100; For a discussion on this passage see Furley and Wilkie (1984) 3-5;
Lambridis (1976) 94; Kirk, Raven and Schofield (2007) 359-60 n1.
414 Diogenes:DK64 B5 and DK64 A29; Harris (1973) 26; Furley and Wilkie (1984) 10.
415Καὶτότεδὴἡγῆἀραιήἐστιτοῦθέρεοςκαὶκούφηκαὶὕδωρἐναὑτῇἔχουσα· καὶτὸὕδωρῥέειἐς τὰκατάντεα· χωρέοντοςδὲτοῦὕδατοςαἰεὶἀποπνέειαὐτόθενἕτερονἐξἑτέρουπνεῦµα· τὸδὲ ἀποπνέονδιὰτῆςγῆςἔρχεταικούφηςκαὶἀραιῆςἐούσηςκαὶψῦχοςτῇγῇποιέει, καὶαὐτὸτὸὕδωρ
συµψύχεται.
416 Lonie in his commentary on this treatise notes that this author equates breath with the life force. It
is therefore possible that waters contain this life force in ancient thought as living beings do. Lonie