Void and violent motion

Meaning

Vuide is vacancy or depletion in the account of harmful purging. Nature is said to abhor it and also to resist violent motion. The two are paired as enemies, rather than collapsed into one mechanical effect.

II.3.12 argues that excessive evacuation weakens an already injured Nature. Apparent recovery may instead come from her surviving power to overcome the remedy's impurities, or from a poisonous component drawing out a similar offending humour as Nature expels it. These are alternative explanations in the polemic. The author then disclaims medicine as his profession and returns to separation. The passage's historical aversion to void should not be treated as an established modern physiological law or instruction to avoid appropriate medical care.

The English keeps both “void” and “violent movement,” and preserves the either/or account of apparent cures. The source's humour and sympathy vocabulary is not replaced with modern mechanisms.