The Art of Medicine

begins the knowledge from which all arts are constituted, in accordance with a method and logic. But we have indeed treated that in another work; in this place, however, we institute that which is made by the dissolution of a definition. And by how much it is inferior in dignity, method, and logic to that which is made by resolution, by so much the more is it known to contribute to the compendium of the whole. Indeed, all things can very easily be committed to memory through the dissolution of a definition, for the reason that the best definition contains within itself the heads of the whole D art. Some call this "substantial," distinct from those which are called by the Greeks noëmaticæ intellectual/notional. For these consist of the accidents that inhere in the things being defined; that one consists of substance. I have, however, diligently written out the whole commentary of medicine individually in many other works, to which one may resort for the three doctrines. But we shall now undertake that which is made by the dissolution of a definition, if we only add this: that we are about to hand down only the heads, and as it were the conclusions of those things which have been demonstrated at length.