Obstruction and stopping up

Meaning

Oppiler, suffocate and stop up describe what coarse matter would do instead of entering a body's delicate passages. The verbs distinguish blockage from useful penetration.

II.3.26 requires a life-maintaining substance to be subtle enough to reach the centre and stable enough not to flee. Earthliness obstructs entry; adustion obstructs fixation. These are separate failures, so a preparation's ability to penetrate is insufficient if it cannot remain. The passage applies that scheme to claimed medicine and invokes Paracelsus, but supplies no independently established physiological mechanism or safe treatment. Its lexical importance is the precise contrast among entry, blockage, permanence and escape.

The new English renders oppileroit as “would obstruct,” retaining the hypothetical condition if the substance were coarse. The sequence is not a report that every bodily passage was directly observed.