And so the comic poets make a
good metaphor in jest when they call grey hairs 'mould of old age' and
For the one is generically the same as greyness, the other
specifically; hoar-frost generically (for both are a vapour),
mould specifically (for both are a form of decay). A proof that this
is so is this: grey hairs have often grown on men in consequence of
disease, and later on dark hairs instead of them after restoration
to health. The reason is that in sickness the whole body is
deficient in natural heat and so the parts besides, even the very
small ones, participate in this weakness; and again, much residual
matter is formed in the body and all its parts in illness, wherefore
the incapacity in the flesh to concoct the nutriment causes the grey
hairs. But when men have recovered health and strength again they
change, becoming as it were young again instead of old; in consequence
the states change also. Indeed, we may rightly call disease an
acquired old age, old age a natural disease; at any rate, some
diseases produce the same effects as old age.
Men go grey on the temples first, because the back of the head is
empty of moisture owing to its containing no brain, and the 'bregma'
has a great deal of moisture, a large quantity not being liable to
decay; the hair on the temples however has neither so little that it
can concoct it nor so much that it cannot decay, for this region of
the head being between the two extremes is exempt from both states.
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