The fundamental constituents or elements (stoicheia) of physical bodies are—theoretically—earth, air, fire and water. However, it is also legitimate to state that the elements are the hot, the cold, the wet and the dry; and indeed it is this latter model which is of the greatest explanatory value for Galen, and which he employs almost universally in his accounts of bodies and their physical change (for example in Temp., and more generally in his work on health, disease and pharmacology). He tend