BEŞİNCİ BÂB · ÜÇÜNCÜ FASIL · Dördüncü Madde
**Article Four**
Regarding the balancing of three of the six obligatory causes mentioned above.
O esteemed one! Know that medical experts have said: It is necessary for someone who strives to maintain the health of their body and makes it a duty upon themselves to balance these six obligatory causes through precaution. First, the encompassing air must be balanced (moderated) so that spring is welcomed with expulsion and purification. One should use things like roasted carob and consume soothing substances like pomegranate seeds. Avoid strenuous movements, sweets, and heated places like warm baths; reduce food intake and lighten clothing.
In summer, strive to remain in shaded areas and avoid excessive movement. Consume refined and cool foods that dispel bile (yellow humor). Abstain from all heating and drying foods. Prefer fresh, delicious fruits such as cucumbers and melons. Wear white and linen garments that retain coolness. In autumn, refrain from excessive sexual relations, bathing with cold water, and all dried foods. Avoid cold drinks, eating too many juicy fruits, vomiting, exposing the head, the chill of morning, and the heat of midday. Greet winter with fur and thick blankets, preferring strong and warming foods like meat and keşkek (a wheat porridge). Vigorous and heavy movements are beneficial in this season. Vomiting weakens strength during winter.
The causes of bodily movement and stillness: The body cannot endure without nourishment due to the reasons within it and external to it, and because parts constantly depart from it. No food can be entirely transformed into a single organ. Perhaps, at each stage of the four digestions, there remains a surplus and a residue in the food that is devoid of benefit. Nature does not find opportunity to eliminate this excess, so it neglects it. If these excesses remain within the body and multiply, so much waste material accumulates that it harms the body in quality – either heating or scorching it, cooling it or extinguishing its heat – or in quantity, clogging blood vessels and weighing down the body. Diseases of constipation arise. If those accumulated substances are vomited, they will certainly cause distress to the body, for most emetic drugs are poisonous. Moreover, they do not refrain from expelling that which is beneficial and useful to the mixture within the body. Thus, whether the excesses accumulate in the body or are expelled, they are harmful.
However, what is called bodily exercise (riyāḍah) prevents the formation of these excesses and surpluses. For bodily movement warms all organs of the body, drawing away the excesses to such a degree that no surplus remains in any of the four digestive stages. If balanced movement is performed at its appropriate times, it becomes a form of bodily exercise (riyāḍah) that brings pleasure and lightness to the body and makes it capable of receiving nourishment. It strengthens joints, increases their flexibility, and resilience with moisture and nerves, and tendons. It protects against all material illnesses and keeps away most diseases related to temperament. The time for bodily movement is after food has completely descended into the stomach and been digested. That is, at dinnertime, when food is being digested in the stomach, liver, and vessels, and the time for another meal arrives.
A moderate form of bodily movement is that which causes the face to redden and the veins to appear on the skin. As for the bodily movement in which the flow of the veins accelerates, that is an excess; it increases the body’s heat and dries it up, removing its moisture. Whatever organ of the body experiences balanced bodily movement will be strengthened; especially in the type of bodily movement it undergoes. For example, if the hand's movement is frequent in carrying objects, its strength in carrying objects will be greater than that of unaccustomed hands. The nature and excellence of every strength are like the movement of a bodily organ. Just as memory increases with continued memorization.
Every limb has its own form of bodily movement. Thus, the brain’s movement is sneezing, which removes discomfort and distress from it through that movement, and repels harmful odors attached to it from the nasal passages. The lung's movement is coughing, by which nature eliminates thick phlegm within it or excessive cold striking the chest. Trembling (iḥtilāʿ) – a disease of the body’s twitching – is a harsh wind; as long as that wind separates and enters somewhere, the muscles and the skin attached to them move. Trembling occurs when the power of movement in the muscle cannot suffice to move it.
Just as it arises from fear, anger, confusion, sorrow, and exertion. The chest’s movement is recitation (reading). Beginning recitation silently and gradually raising the voice brings it comfort. The ear's movement is listening to beautiful sounds and pleasing melodies. The eye’s movement is beholding beautiful things. The hand’s movement is grasping firmly. The foot’s movement is walking. Riding a cantering horse is a bodily movement for the entire body, which separates more than it warms. Swinging on a swing is like riding a gentle horse. Playing ball and polo is a movement of the body and soul, because the winner experiences joy and happiness, while the loser feels sadness and anger.
Sailing on a ship moves the four humors and is beneficial to the stomach. It eliminates chronic diseases such as istiskā (water accumulation in any part of the body) and leprosy (a skin disease), for travel by sea involves alternating comfort and discomfort.
The remedy for love is not to be found,
Even if the physician were Christ himself.