There is no system in the body which does not work as much as any of the other systems. But the respiratory and digestive systems are tasked with the difficult job of converting substances of the external physical environment into substances of the internal environment of the body. While the respiratory system deals only with air and its qualities, the digestive system deals with the immense variety of foodstuffs we take in from the physical environment. The challenge for the digestive system becomes to convert this immense variety into a homogenous and uniform substance which can be further broken down into its chemical components and metabolized in the body. This complex process makes the digestive system particularly prone to immense variety of diseases from allergies and food poisonings to wear-and-tear disorders. Because diseases of the digestive system are extremely common now and in antiquity, they are among the ones that are both well-understood and ones that are most misunderstood. The Hippocratic treatises On Haemorrhoids and On Internal Affections gives us two brilliant examples of the ancients’ mastery of understanding and treating haemorroids and their lack of understanding of the various forms of liver disease. Read the selection from the two treatises and explain the reasons for which the ancients understand so well the one disease and so poorly the another. Can you come up with a modern comparison of GI diseases that are understood and not understood well? Do some detective work with the section of Diseases and Disorders of the Digestive System in our textbook (pp. 288–304). Can you identify the disease described in chapter 48 of On Internal Affections? It could be one or more.
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