Galen's Commentaries on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates

[to be] applied: namely, only as much as a weaker nature demands. Wherefore sometimes at the very peak of the disease, when some accident has intervened, dissolving the strength of nature, we are compelled to nourish the patient. This discourse, however, would be a part of the whole reasoning for offering nourishment. Hence, if anyone should make this, the previous, and the following aphorism into one, he will not err. But I, cutting it into parts, explain it as far as possible for the sake of clearer instruction.

Ornamental drop cap HThis discourse likewise has the same meaning as the previous one, except that it is more universal. For previously he said regarding acute diseases that one ought to use the thinnest diet in them immediately. Here, however, he pronounces simply about all diseases in which the time of standing will be immediate—that is, not long after the first accession—ordering for this reason to apply a thin diet. The things that follow are manifest, since they adhere to the same meaning. xi.

Ornamental drop cap THe ordered the form of the whole diet in each disease to be taken from two intentions: both from the future peak of the entire disease and from the strength of the sick person. In this discourse, he teaches how someone may appropriately offer food in particulars, ordering that the accessions of diseases be avoided; he himself spoke more clearly in the book On the Regimen of Acute Diseases. That food must be given neither when accessions are already present, nor when they are about to be present shortly thereafter, but when they decline or cease. xii.

Ornamental drop cap QIn those, therefore, for whom the disease stands immediately, for these a thin diet must be applied immediately; but for those for whom it must stand later, food must be withdrawn both at the time of standing itself and shortly before it, but previously one must act more liberally, so that the patient may endure. xi.

Ornamental drop cap IIn accessions one must abstain, for giving food is harmful; and in those for whom accessions occur by way of a circuit, one must abstain during the accession itself. xii.

Ornamental drop cap AMoreover, the seasons of the year and the successive increases of the circuits will indicate the accessions and the constitutions of the disease, whether they occur daily, or on alternate days, or through longer intervals. But from these things they take indications which appear soon, just as he teaches appropriately in this discourse.

Ornamental drop cap SIf we recall to memory the things that were previously said by him concerning the regimen of diet, the utility of those things which are now said will become more manifest to us. The things that were said before are these: he fashioned the form of the whole diet by looking toward two intentions, of which one was the strength of the sick person and the other the constitution of the disease. For if a disease be acute, or peracute, or long, and when it will stand most in its vigor, it is nothing other than to consider the constitution of the disease; the particular offerings of food, however, were conjectured from the particular accessions. Since, therefore, there were three intentions for a perfect and unfailing regimen of diet: the first indeed is taken from the strength of the sick person, the second from the constitution of the disease, and the third, besides these, from the particular accessions. The physician can indeed comprehend the strength at the very first entrance, namely from the pulses and other things which he himself wrote about more extensively in the book Prognostics. Perhaps someone might say that the magnitude of the strength is incomprehensible. But if we cannot know their quantity precisely, no one will deny that we are nevertheless able to approach very close to the truth by a certain skillful conjecture. But many physicians have thought that the constitution of the disease, of what sort it may be, and the particular accessions, cannot be discerned; nevertheless, Hippocrates did not feel the same way, but in this part, just as in others, often indeed precisely, and as someone might say, skillfully and knowingly, often...