BOOK

hardness, softness, smoothness, contact: then the movement of each part, and their withdrawal: and whether one part is inserted into another, or whether one part receives a portion of another into itself. For when pain occurs internally, he who does not know which organ or intestine is in which location cannot know what is in pain. Nor can that which is sick be cured by one who is ignorant of what it is. And when a person's internal organs are laid open by a wound, one who is ignorant of the color of each healthy part cannot know what is sound and what is corrupted. Therefore, one cannot even provide relief for corrupted parts, and remedies are more appropriately applied externally once the locations and shapes of the internal parts have been discovered. Once their size is known, everything that is positioned in this way is understood to follow similar principles. Nor is it cruel, as many suggest, to seek out remedies for the people of all ages through the punishment of a few guilty men. On the other hand, those who call themselves empiricos empiricists—deriving their name from experience—embrace manifest causes as necessary. However, they contend that the investigation of obscure and natural bodily actions is superfluous, because nature is incomprehensible. That it cannot be comprehended is evident from the discord among those who have disputed these matters: since on this subject, there is no agreement either among professors of wisdom or among physicians themselves. For why should one believe Hippocrates rather than Herophilus? Why this one rather than Asclepiades? If one wishes to follow their reasonings, all may seem not implausible. If one follows their treatments, patients have been led to health by all of them. Thus, faith should not have been denied to the argument nor to the authority of anyone. If logical reasoning were the factor, students of wisdom would be the greatest physicians. As it is, they have only words, and they lack the science of healing. The types of medicine also differ according to the nature of locations: one practice is for Rome, another for Egypt, another for Gaul. If the same causes produced diseases everywhere, the remedies should also have been the same everywhere. Often, causes appear, such as in cases of eye inflammation or a wound; yet medicine is not revealed by these alone. But if a manifest cause does not reveal this science, much less can a cause that is in doubt reveal it. Since, therefore, that [the nature of hidden things] is uncertain and incomprehensible, help must be sought rather from certain and explored sources, that is, from those things which experience has taught in the actual treatments, just as in all other arts. For not even a farmer or a pilot is made by disputation, but by practice. And these speculations have nothing to do with medicine. It is also learned from the fact that those who have written different things about these matters have nevertheless led men to the same health. For they did this not by drawing healing paths from obscure causes or from natural actions, which were different among them, but from experiments according to how each had responded. For among the sick who were without physicians, some, because of greed...