Pharmacy

ON THE METHOD OF HEALING

When healing happens slowly and gradually, it respects both the nature of the disease and the patient. The disease is driven away while the natural state of the body is offended as little as possible. This gradual healing happens in two ways: through the use of contraries original: "contrariis". The principle of "contraria contrariis curantur" (opposites are cured by opposites), such as using cooling herbs for a fever. that are either of an equal or a lower degree original: "recessus ordine". A classification system where medicines and diseases were ranked from 1 to 4 based on their intensity.. If substances of equal strength are given in tiny amounts, or if those of a lower degree are given repeatedly, they remove the disease gently and perceptibly. For instance, a substance that is cold in the third degree, if applied to a disease of the same degree in a small quantity, cannot dispel the whole illness at once. However, if it is repeated often, it can. Truly, even if these do not cause great harm in large amounts, they still burn a certain stain of their harmful quality into the body over time. Because of this, their use is not entirely safe. You cannot properly extinguish an excessive bodily heat with opium, mandrake, or henbane These plants were known as "narcotics" in the 16th century and were considered cold in the fourth degree. They were viewed as potentially poisonous. even if given in small, repeated portions. Nor can you usefully draw out an overflowing humor with small, repeated doses of scammony or colocynth Scammony and colocynth (bitter apple) are very powerful purgatives that were known to be harsh on the digestive system..

Safe healing.

The other method of healing is safer. It is done slowly and gradually using mild contraries of a lower degree, either repeated or used in larger amounts. Slowly, with much leisure and time, they dispel every affliction. This causes no loss, or certainly the smallest possible loss, to the body and its strength. No harmful quality is introduced into the body. However, one must ensure the power of the remedies is not so weak and sluggish that they accomplish nothing at all. Indeed, a more violent disease often spurns and despises such weak medicines, so that it does not yield to them even if they are repeated. Remedies should be gentle enough to help, yet strong enough so that the disease is not provoked or worsened by their mildness, which often happens. For patients with weak strength, a light and slow cure is necessary. This approach should always be preferred unless a more violent disease forces the physician to hurry. Such a cure is safe and pleasant; as the saying goes, it happens quickly enough if it happens well enough. If all things are managed by this rule of gradual healing and the result is not what reason demands, Hippocrates says one should not immediately move to something else. Even if no manifest benefit has followed yet and the outcome of the remedies is slow, once the correct way of healing has been discovered, one must not depart from it. Unskilled stupidity, possessing nothing fixed or certain, wanders here and there through every kind of remedy. Yet, while you stay within the same class of remedies, it is permitted to wander through many and various options, lest...