Good Condition

​But sometimes one is highly praiseworthy, while the other, as it happens, is blameworthy; just as the good constitution of athletes has indeed so much praise as to be deservedly blamed, not only by Hippocrates or the other ancient physicians, but also by the best philosophers, as Plato too in the third book of the Republic demonstrates its complete uselessness for natural activity and details how dangerous it is for health. For because they pursue not simply a well-tempered state of the body, but also bulk of mass—which could not occur without immoderate filling—they thus render it both dangerous and useless for civic activities. Therefore, so that we may arrive at an accurate knowledge of true good constitution, we must contrast with it the homonymous athletic good constitution, and consider what is the same in both and what is opposite. Now, the well-tempered state of all the parts of the body is common to both. So too is the excellence of activities, and if these are present, also the good state of the humors. These are the common features. On the other hand, the opposites are: proportion of blood and of the entire mass of solid bodies in true good constitutions, but disproportion of these very things, and especially of the fleshy kind, in athletic ones, which is necessarily followed by danger when it reaches the extreme. For when they eat under compulsion, and the stomach digests vigorously, and distribution easily follows digestion, and sanguification, addition, adhesion, and nutrition follow these, there is a danger of the state becoming overfilled, so that there is no longer any room for addition for nature; and at this point the veins are immoderately filled with blood, and the innate heat is extinguished and suffocated, lacking transpiration. But if this still holds out, some of the vital vessels burst, which are situated near the lungs, liver, and chest. For these are softer in their tunics than those in the limbs, and receive the nourishment sooner, and because of the abundance of natural heat in them, and also the continuity of activities, the blood, undergoing something similar to boiling, bursts their tunics, just as sweet wine bursts jars. Thus, all these things occur in this way, following of necessity upon immoderate fillings, and the demonstrations concerning them follow natural principles. That the innate heat is extinguished when the veins are overfilled with blood has been said in the work On the Usefulness of Respiration, and that the veins burst, in the anatomical works. In this way, Hippocrates also would appear to know this, not only when he says that the extreme good constitution in gymnasts is dangerous, but also when he writes elsewhere: “In sudden loss of voice, blockages of the veins afflict the body.” For he indicated the sudden paralyses of all activities through one most vital activity. And he called “blockages of veins” the overfillings, when they lack transpiration for cooling.