Universal Music-making (Musurgia Universalis), Volume I

If the follower of Hippocrates and Galen Hippocrates (c. 460 – c. 370 BCE) and Galen (129 – c. 216 CE) were the foundational authorities of Western medicine until the early modern period.,
In his practice of healing, understood music:
And through his studies knew how to investigate
The various notes of Nature in full:

He would perceive, to our lesser harm,
That illnesses are not removed by contraries The poet is referencing the medical debate between "allopathy" (curing by opposites, like cooling a fever) and "sympathy" (curing by similarities).,
But he would see over the years those natural consonances
That the remedy shares with the ailment:

He would see how Rhubarb original: "Reobarbaro." Rhubarb was a prized medicinal root in the 1600s, primarily used as a purgative to expel yellow bile. carries away
The bile from the body and leads it afar,
Because it possesses a similar quality to it,
And thus restores the sick to health.

A body in which poisoned leprosy creeps,
Wretched, if it is deprived of all human aid;
When no medical hand is able to help it,
Acted upon by pity, a serpent then cures it This refers to the ancient belief that viper flesh or venom could cure skin diseases or act as an anti-venom, a principle used in the famous "Theriac" medicine..

The Viper’s venom is calmed by the Viper.
And the Scorpion is a remedy for the Scorpion.
And if ever a pestilential season arrives,
The pestilential Toad Dried toads or toad-based amulets were frequently used during plague outbreaks based on the "doctrine of signatures," believing the "poisonous" toad could draw out the "poison" of the plague. heals one from the plague.

All this is because that concordant harmony,
Which exists between the remedy and the ill, unites them.
From this, the effect is then brought forth
Of drawing away with it that which is discordant to man.

For what else is health, but a consonance
Born from the mixture of one humor with another? The "Four Humors" (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile) were required to be in "harmony" for a person to be healthy.
And what else is it that brings distress to the heart,
But discordant and dissolute qualities?

Now you will have seen through all five senses,
If to those already told you add the sense of touch:
That whatever was ever made perceivable to the senses
Pertains to the consonant and the dissonant.