Pharmacy

BOOK I.

...those who are about to practice medicine with its aid, they may extol it with great praise of its dignity among all people. May these things finally become honorable to the advisor, fruitful to the compliant and obedient person, and lastly, healing for the entire human race.

The duty of the physician, and the excellence of the art. CHAPTER I.

The physician's task and duty is to provide care appropriately for healing. For he does not always restore the sick person to health. However, he cares appropriately who applies remedies quickly, safely, and pleasantly. original: "cito, tuto & jucunde." This is a famous medical aphorism by Asclepiades of Bithynia, emphasizing that the treatment should not be more painful than the disease. Furthermore, the physician provides remedies not only as a servant of nature, but sometimes as an assistant, and sometimes even as the primary craftsman. Indeed, in most matters, art is more excellent than nature. It not only imitates nature, but sometimes assists it, sometimes even surpasses it, and often achieves more in healing than nature does. The physician sometimes achieves more than nature. For nature, the ruler of human life, manages all things as best as she can. She works diligently to preserve the body in complete health until the very end of life, or at least in the state it was at birth. If the body is perhaps attacked by some external injury, she repels it with all her might. Medicine imitates and directs with wisdom whatever nature does correctly, whether to protect health or to drive away diseases. It sets health as the single goal of all its actions. Sometimes, when nature is hindered by the persistence of a disease or suffers from weakness, medicine brings help as an assistant. It completes and perfects unfinished or partial tasks. It often makes long lasting illnesses shorter. Furthermore, it sometimes surpasses nature. For it resets dislocated limbs and draws together the separated edges of a wound. In many other cases, it manages the primary part of the treatment, which nature is least able to attempt. Why, I ask, would this art have been established by the great efforts of our ancestors, unless it offered something greater and more excellent than nature? Just as craftsmanship carves magnificent and exceptional works into gold, which is a natural material, reaching beyond the powers of nature. And architecture builds houses and temples from wood and stone, which nature could never build. So also medicine performs some things that are greater and sometimes more excellent than what nature can accomplish. This is because nature is guided by instinct alone, while medicine is guided by the knowledge and understanding of things. Since, therefore, of all the things the world possesses...

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