Phlegm

Use in the book

At p. 21 rainwater is said to contain every colour, and Hollandus is cited for the three spirits in natural warmth: taste, smell and colour. These are called the soul, life and quintessence of things (I.021.1). The author connects this to rainwater’s sweetness and pleasantness. Sensible qualities therefore bear an explanatory relation to inward power in the local argument.⁶²

The next page addresses Aristotelian philosophers who, the author says, commonly maintain the contrary. He declines an extended quarrel but asks them to remember their own apothecaries’ waters. When these have aged and lost the three properties, nothing remains but Phlegma (I.022.1). The aside that this still sometimes serves poor patients as medicine adds criticism of practice to the theoretical example.

A decayed apple supplies the parallel. When it has lost smell, taste and colour through rotting, only Excrementum remains. The comparison links phlegm with waste in a functional account of lost virtue. It does not establish that the two words are strict synonyms in every passage, or that their ordinary substances are chemically identical.

The later substance-residue distinction supplies a wider reading connection. Lower bodies are said to contain essential substance and accidental residues that mingle with and distort purity but can be removed by art (II.218.2). The phlegm example is earlier and more concrete; it should not be forced into a full analysis of that later ontology. Together, however, the passages show the author’s concern to distinguish useful essence from an unproductive or obscuring remainder.

Places to read

1. Part I · I.021.1; I.022.12The sensory triad, spoiled distilled waters and decayed apple.
2. Part II · II.218.2The later distinction of substance and accidental residues.

Translation

Phlegma is translated “phlegm” with a contextual explanation. Gebrandte Wasser is rendered distilled waters in the apothecary setting. The translation does not silently insert a specific modern distillate or presume that the word denotes one chemically uniform fraction.

Connections

Quintessence explains the positive claim immediately preceding phlegm. Distillation concerns the operation that produces the apothecaries’ waters, while Residues explains the broader waste vocabulary. Medicine and its orders is useful for distinguishing the polemic against depleted remedies from a complete judgment of every medicine available in shops.

Cautions

Loss of taste, smell and colour is the author’s historical criterion in this example, not a sufficient modern test of medicinal efficacy or safety. The passage does not establish that every colourless, odourless water is useless. Its object is the aging of preparations that previously possessed the named properties.

Phlegma

Phlegma — phlegm. I.022.1.

gebrandte Wasser

gebrandte Wasser — distilled waters. I.022.1.