Medical Letters, Volume One

Recognizing the disease ...and proximity, according to natural justice. By what means the Physician can first recognize the disease and its essence, you have seen in Galen in his booklet On the Differences of Diseases, and On Affected Places, and also in Avicenna, the first and second sections of the first Canon, as well as in others of their books. Cure That the knowledge of the essence of the disease is necessary, Galen testifies in many places in the second and fourth books of his Method of Healing against the Empirics The Empirics were an ancient school of medicine that relied on experience rather than underlying causes; for he says that the curative indication must be taken from the essence of the sickness, since the knowledge of the disease and the beginning of the curative intention are in the same place. Furthermore, when one wishes to apply remedies correctly to a disease, knowledge of the disease is undoubtedly necessary. Regarding this same opinion, he wrote in the third commentary of the first book of The Regimen of Acute Diseases, when he says: it is worthwhile, first of all, that we recognize the nature original: "esse," literally "to be" of the disease, and then turn our mind toward its cure. The most learned Avicenna declared this opinion in the fourth section of his first Canon, saying: knowledge of medicines is not possessed except through knowledge of the species and quality of the disease, since contrary medicine must be applied after the knowledge of the disease's quality has been certified; and in the first section of the fourth book concerning the cure of putrid fevers in general, when he says that a fever cannot be cured unless we first recognize it. Therefore, since reason dictates and all wise men confirm that knowledge of the disease is necessary, the first worthwhile thing is to know in which of the three types the disease itself belongs: namely, whether it is in the temperament, or in the composition, or in the dissolution of continuity. In which disease If the disease is a bad temperament bad temperament: "mala temperies," an imbalance of the four bodily qualities—heat, cold, moisture, and dryness, it must be seen whether it is hot, cold, moist, or dry; simple or composite; and whether it is with or without matter i.e., whether there is a physical buildup of humors or just a change in quality; and whether it is a fever or some other disease that indicates a malice of the complexion complexion: "complexio," the specific physiological balance of an individual; and if it is a fever, whether it is ephemeral, or putrid, or habitual; and you shall proceed thus in other complexional diseases. But if the disease is a bad composition an anatomical or structural abnormality in the way organs are formed, it must be seen whether it arises from the formation or "plasmation", or the figure, or the quantity, or the number, or the position. Likewise, if the disease is a dissolved continuity dissolved continuity: "soluta continuitas," a physical break in bodily tissues, such as a wound or fracture, take notice whether it arises from a wound, dislocation, fracture, convulsion, abscess, or any other mode of ulceration; about all of which Galen wrote more in his book On the Constitution of the Medical Art, and Avicenna in the second section of the first Canon. Furthermore, pay attention in your mind to whether the disease is one or several, and whether they are simple or composite, and whether they are primary, or through con...

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