FIRST.

in the first days immediately took food: others, due to distaste, abstained: and the illness of those who had abstained was relieved more. Likewise, others ate something during the fever itself: others a little before it: others after its remission. Finally, it turned out best for those who did so after the end of the fever. From this, others learned to use more substantial food right from the beginning: others used little: and those who filled themselves became graver. When these and similar things occurred daily, diligent men noted which responses were generally better: then they began to prescribe those things to the sick. Thus, medicine originated, medicine was first discovered from disproven reason distinguishing harmful things from healthy ones through the subsequent survival of some and the death of others. Once the remedies of medicine were found, men began to discourse on their reasons: medicine was not invented after reason, but reason was sought after medicine had been invented. It is also asked whether reason teaches the same thing as experience, or something else. If the same, it is superfluous. If something else, it is even contrary. At first, however, remedies had to be explored with the utmost care. Now, however, they have already been explored: and neither are new types of diseases found, nor is new medicine desired. But if some unknown type of ailment should now occur, the physician should not, on that account, ponder obscure matters: instead, he will immediately look to see to which disease it is closest: he will try remedies similar to those that have often helped a neighboring ailment: and through that similarity, he will find help. For they do not say that a physician does not need judgment, or that an irrational animal can provide this art. But they say that these conjectures about latent things do not pertain to the matter: because it does not matter what causes the disease, but what removes it. And it does not pertain to the matter how, but what is best digested: whether concoction occurs for this reason or that, and whether it is that [proper] concoction or merely digestion. Nor should one ask how we breathe: but what relieves heavy and slow breathing. Nor what moves the veins: but what each type of movement signifies. These things are known by experiments, and in all such cogitations, one can argue on both sides. Thus, talent and eloquence win; however, diseases are not cured by eloquence, diseases are cured not by eloquence but by remedies but by remedies. If someone who is inarticulate knows well what has been distinguished by use, he will be a somewhat greater physician than if he had cultivated his tongue without use. And those things of which we have spoken are merely superfluous. That which remains is also cruel: that the abdomens and viscera of living men are cut open: and that an art which is the guardian of human health brings not only death to someone, but this most atrocious [act]: especially since, from those things which are sought with such violence, some cannot be known at all, while others can be known even without crime. For color, smoothness, softness, hardness, and all similar things are not the same in a cut body as they were in an intact one. Since these things are often changed in unviolated bodies by fear, pain, hunger, indigestion, fatigue, and a thousand other moderate afflictions, it is much more likely that the internal parts—to which the very light itself is a new softness—are changed under the most severe wounds and by the slaughter itself. Nor is there anything more foolish than to think that such things are the same in a living man as they are in a dying one, or rather, in one already dead. For can the uterus, which pertains less to the matter, be unfolded while a man is breathing? But as soon as the iron approaches the viscera and the transverse partition is cut—which a certain membrane, which the Greeks call diaphragma diaphragm, separates the upper parts from the lower—the man immediately loses his life. Only then are the viscera and the entire internal organs of the dead man given to the sight of the marauding physician: it is necessary that these be such as they are in the dead, not as they were in the living. Thus, the physician succeeds only in cruelly slaughtering a man, not in knowing what our viscera are like while alive. If, however, there is anything that can be presented to the sight while the man is still breathing, chance often offers it to those who are treating him. For sometimes a gladiator in the arena, or a soldier on the battlefield, or a traveler waylaid by robbers is so wounded that some internal part is opened: and a wise physician, seeking not slaughter but health, can learn the location, position, order, shape, and similar other things in one person while another is situated elsewhere: and learn through compassion that which others have learned through dire cruelty. For these reasons, even the laceration of the dead is not necessary, which, even if not cruel, is nevertheless foul: since most things are different in the dead. As much as can be known in the living, the treatment itself should show. Since these things have been treated often by physicians through many volumes, through which there have been and are great contentions, it is necessary to present what seem to be closest to the truth: these are neither addicted to one opinion nor too abhorrent of the other, being in a way midway between different sentiments. This can be detected in most contentions by those searching for the truth without ambition: as in this very matter. For what causes finally provide for health or excite diseases, how the spirit or food is either withdrawn or digested, not even professors of wisdom comprehend with science: but they pursue it by conjecture. Of whatever thing there is no certain knowledge, its opinion cannot find a certain remedy. It is true that nothing contributes more to the very method of healing than experience. Although, therefore, many things do not pertain properly to the arts themselves, they assist them by exciting the ingenuity of the artist. Thus, this contemplation of the nature of things, even if it does not make a physician more capable, nevertheless renders medicine perfect. It is likely that Hippocrates, Erasistratus, and whoever else, not content with merely treating fevers and ulcers, have also explored the nature of things in some part: not because they were physicians, but because they were greater physicians for that reason. Reason, however, is necessary to medicine itself, and if not among obscure causes nor among natural actions, then it is often necessary. For this art is conjectural: and often not only conjecture but also experience does not respond to it. And sometimes, not fever, not food, not sleep follows as it is accustomed to do. More rarely, but sometimes, the disease itself is new, of which it is clearly false to say that it does not occur: since in our age, certain natural parts have prolapsed and withered, and [the patient] has expired within a few hours: so that the most noble physicians have found neither the type of ailment nor the remedy: whom I judge to have attempted nothing for this reason: because no one wanted to risk his conjecture on a prominent person, lest he appear to have killed them if he did not save them. Yet it is likely that he could have thought of something if such modesty were set aside: and perhaps it would have responded in the way someone had experienced. To this type of medicine, neither does similarity always contribute anything: and if it does contribute, that very act is rational: to think, among many similar types of both diseases and remedies, which medication should most preferably be used. When, therefore, such a thing occurs, the physician must find something which, perhaps not definitely, but more often than not, may respond. He will seek new advice not from latent things (for those are doubtful and uncertain) but from those which can be explored: that is, manifest causes. It matters whether fatigue caused the disease, or thirst, or cold, or heat, or vigil, or hunger: or an abundance of food and wine: or intemperance of lust: nor should he be ignorant of what the nature of the patient is: whether his body is more moist or more dry: whether his nerves are strong or weak: whether poor health is frequent or rare, and whether that which occurs is usually violent or light, short or long. What kind of life has he followed, laborious or quiet, with luxury or with frugality? For from these and similar things, a new method of healing must often be drawn. Although not even these should be passed over as if they admit no controversy. For Erasistratus said that diseases do not come from these, since others, and the same people at other times, did not get a fever after these things: and some physicians of our age, under the author Themison (as they want to be seen), contend that the knowledge of no cause pertains at all to treatments: and that it is enough to look at certain commonalities of diseases. If, indeed, there are three types of these: one restricted, another flowing, the third mixed. For sometimes patients excrete too little, sometimes too much: sometimes in one part too little, in another too much. These types of diseases, however, are sometimes acute, sometimes long: and sometimes they are accustomed to increase, sometimes to persist, sometimes to decrease. Having recognized, therefore, that which is of these types: if the body is restricted, it must be digested: if it suffers from a flow, it must be contained. If it has a mixed fault, one must encounter the more violent evil in turn. And one must treat acute diseases one way, old ones another. One way those that are increasing, another those that are subsisting. Another way those that are already leaning toward health. The observation of these is medicine: which they define such that it is a certain way which the Greeks call μέθοδον method: and of those things which are in...