Galen's Commentaries on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates

...gives, and when it makes an onset upon any part of the body weaker than the others, it produces either an inflammation in it, or erysipelas, or some other kind of disease. For many more and more serious diseases, for which a plethora has provided the occasion, arise from the fusion of humors. All these things, therefore, support the others, whatever Hippocrates taught in the present aphorism, and they also prove this: that not only are we able to concoct much food during that time, but we even require much. For it is always necessary that nourishment be proportional to the quantity of innate heat, unless perhaps sometimes a fusion arising from the quality of the ambient air (as I have said) compels one to withdraw it. Therefore, since Hippocrates spoke indistinctly concerning spring, I shall make a distinction.

Ornamental woodcut initial V featuring a floral or foliate background.A moist diet is beneficial for all those with fevers, but especially for those and others who have been accustomed to using such a diet.

First, because it has its beginning similar to winter, more than to summer, and its end the opposite. Furthermore, because it sometimes carries such coldness as the winter season; sometimes such heat as the summer season. In its first parts, therefore, if it should ever be cold, we shall apply a regimen of diet similar to the winter one. In the later parts, however, and if it should ever be hotter, one similar to the summer. But if it should maintain a middle temperature, we shall establish a proportional diet for it. All these things indeed are said concerning the regimen of diet which ought to be applied to the healthy. Hereafter, however, we shall speak of that which is suitable for the sick.

Ornamental woodcut initial I featuring a floral or foliate background.In the preceding aphorisms he handed down to us the doctrine concerning the quantity of diet; now, however, he deals with quality, teaching many things that are indeed conducive to the art in a very brief discourse. First, indeed, what kind of diet must be applied to those with fevers. Then, that it is necessary to make the indications of healthful diets contrary in those things which are contrary to nature, but similar in those things which are according to nature. For in a fever, since it is a hot and dry passion (for it is a conversion of native heat into fiery heat), he advised a moist diet; but for moister natures, whether on account of age or on account of habit, he determined that a diet not contrary, but rather related to the nature, must be maintained; for it is necessary to foster their nature through moist things, not to demolish it in the same manner as diseases.

But those who, bringing forward "water between the skin" (to which fever is joined), strive to censure the discourse of Hippocrates through quibbling—since this disease does not require a moist diet, but rather a dry one—these men are ignorant of the chief point of the curative art, especially necessary, which we have dealt with more fully in that treatise: that every simple sickness requires a simple cure. But if they are coupled together, they will have as much common indication for treatment as they are coupled—namely, with us meeting that which is more urgent, yet without the care of the other being entirely neglected, since sometimes we may assist all with equal zeal. Moreover, what they mention regarding those laboring from water between the skin and fever simultaneously is not unlike the "disease of the side" [pleurisy], in which blood is spat up. For in these also the diseases require contrary treatments: the drawing of blood and the affection of the side; when these happen to someone at the same time, one must meet that which is more urgent, the treatment of the other not being entirely neglected. Thus, therefore, if anyone should at once have a fever and labor under that disposition which is named water between the skin, by looking to both affections, which require contrary treatment, we properly resist each of them. Just as in all other things coupled in like manner. Therefore, we shall neither say any such thing ourselves, nor shall we admit another saying such things. And if Hippocrates did not say something in the aphorism through his own words, which nevertheless the same...