BOOK I

B b 4.

How far one should proceed in a cure.

Focusing on this, advance the treatment until a return to the previous state has been achieved. The goal is to return to the point from which the disease first took its origin. Preserve the former state, even if it is flawed, just as you found it. Do not labor to change it into a better condition as long as the disease is causing distress, unless that state is the cause of the disease or hinders its cure. Once the more recent disease has been removed and the patient's strength is restored, if any of the older condition is found to remain, it should be dismantled gradually and with much rest, if it seems appropriate.

Aphorism 7, Book 3.

For conditions contracted over a long period of time must be cured slowly. Those contracted in a short time should be cured quickly. In this way, the duration of the cure is made equal to the duration of the disease's creation. Whoever doubts their ability to determine the exact quantity of a remedy through their art should do everything gradually and bit by bit, until the patient seems restored and has recovered their former life functions.

Many people are occupied by the magnitude of this question: whether a person can return from a disease to their former and equally healthy state.

A question and its solution.

This is debated with strong arguments on both sides, but whatever is obscure or ambiguous in the matter will become clear once an explanation is provided. A disease often emerges suddenly, even though its cause had taken root gradually. For a person who has a persistent cause inside has had that cause generated gradually over a long time. For example, although a continual fever original: "continua febris". A fever that does not remit, often associated in early medicine with an excess of humors. might suddenly seize a person, its cause, which is a defect of the humors, was growing stronger gradually for a long time beforehand. Because of this, the body was not entirely and perfectly healthy even then. Therefore, when the fever is perfectly cured by removing the cause, the body does not only return to its former state, but often to a much better one than existed before the fever.

However, it cannot be achieved by any art that a person returns to an identical condition as that which existed before the disease and its cause began. Or, if the disease existed without a persistent cause, it is impossible to return to the exact former state. For even what was naturally good is changed somewhat by the disease, and the affected part contracts something from the ailment. The part retains the character of that ailment for a long time or even forever, and remains weaker. This appears most clearly in the more serious diseases. The remedy for every affliction has now been found, as well as its designated quantity. What remains is the method of use, which explains to which part, in what form, and at what time and hour the remedy should be applied.