BOOK I.

The cause ought to be cut off and removed. For as long as the cause persists, the affliction remains, and it cannot be thoroughly rooted out. If you strive to remove a part of the affliction, the constant and continuous cause will produce just as much as you took away. Because the cause is natural to that state, it never remains idle. Although the affliction may sometimes become lighter, a perfect cure never follows. When a fresh affliction has no firm or stable constitution yet, it is usually destroyed entirely once the cause is removed. But when a part of it has already been generated, and a new part is continuously added as if by a new birth, then removing the primary cause alone does not take away the existing affliction.

Therefore, the cause must be removed first, and then the affliction itself. In this way, the disease is pulled out by the roots so that no part of it can sprout again. When there is a long series of causes, where one is born from another and all seem connected, each must be removed in its own order. The beginning of the cure should be taken from the cause that was first in origin, even if it was the last one found during the investigation. From this first cause, the physician progresses gradually and orderly to the others, and finally to the disease itself, using a remedy that is the opposite of each specific problem.

Through this one method of healing, the physician excels over the herbalist and the pharmacist.

This is no longer a simple treatment, but a methodical cure. it is completed not just by remedies, but by a strategic path and plan of use. By this alone, the physician is superior to herbalists and pharmacists, who also know the materials of medicines. Take, for example, a person who, through long and immoderate use of impure and hot food, has produced an acrid chyle original: "chylus"; the milky fluid produced in the stomach during digestion before it is processed into blood.. This chyle, drawn into the liver original: "iecur" by necessity or a lack of other fluid, produces excessive bile and corrupt humors original: "humores"; the four vital fluids (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile) whose balance was thought to determine health.. Later, corruption and putrefaction original: "putredo" easily occur in the veins, followed closely by a fever and its various symptoms.

It is clear that neither the fever nor its symptoms can be calmed unless the putrefaction is emptied. However, it is useless to purge this putrefaction unless the accumulation original: "colluuies"; a buildup of waste or impure fluids in the body. of humors that produces it is corrected. This accumulation cannot be corrected as long as impure chyle flows from the stomach and more impure, hot food is supplied. Therefore, unless a more urgent matter interferes, the physician must first stop the evident causes that generate the impure chyle. Next, all the impure accumulation providing the material for putrefaction must be purged. Then, the putrefaction of humors arising from these causes must be emptied. Finally, if any foreign heat is left in the humors or the parts themselves, it must be extinguished.