Eight Books on Medicine

as Asclepiades contends. He will rightly cure who is not deceived by the first origin of the cause. Nor do they deny that experiments are also necessary, but they contend that not even to these could an approach be made unless it was through some reason. For no one just thrust the older men onto the sick, but thought about what might be most appropriate, and tested by practice what he had previously reached by some conjecture. Nor does it matter whether most of the beginnings were explored if they began from a plan. And indeed, in many cases, this is how it is. But often, new types of diseases also invade, in which experience has yet shown nothing. And therefore it is necessary to observe whence they have begun, without which no mortal could find why he should use this rather than that. And for these reasons, they pursue causes placed in the dark. They call manifest those in which they inquire whether heat brought the beginning of a disease, or cold, hunger, or satiety, and things that are similar. For they say that he will encounter the fault who has not been ignorant of the origin. They call natural bodily actions those by which we draw in breath and emit it, and take up food and drink and digest them, and likewise by which these same things are distributed into all parts of the limbs. Then they also inquire why our veins sometimes lower themselves, sometimes rise, and what is the reason for sleep and vigil. Without the knowledge of these, they think no one can either encounter or heal diseases arising among these. From these, because digestion seems to pertain to the matter as much as possible, they insist on this most especially, and with Erasistratus as leader, some contend that food is ground up in the stomach; others, followers of the Plistonic Praxagoras, that it putrefies. Others believe with Hippocrates that food is digested by heat. The rivals of Asclepiades also approach, who propose that all those things are vain and superfluous. For nothing is digested, but raw matter, just as it was taken, is distributed into the whole body. And these things are indeed little agreed upon among them. That, however, is agreed: that different food is to be given to those who are suffering if this is true, or different if that is true. For if it is ground up inside, one must seek that which can be most easily ground up; if it putrefies, that in which this is most expedient; if heat digests, that which most moves heat. But none of these are to be sought if nothing is digested. Those things are to be taken which most remain as they were when assumed. By the same reasoning, when the spirit is heavy, when sleep or vigil presses, they think that one can heal who first knows how those very things come to happen. Besides these, when both pains and various types of diseases arise in the interior parts, they think no one can apply remedies to these whom he himself does not know. his anatomical knowledge will be noted Therefore, it is necessary to invade the bodies of the dead and to examine their viscera and intestines. And by far, Herophilus and Erasistratus did best, who, having received guilty men from kings out of prison, invaded them while alive, and considered—with the spirit still remaining—those things which nature had closed before, and their position, color, figure, magnitude, order,