The Art of Medicine

faculties and actions. Aetiology inquires into the causes of things not only natural but also contrary to nature, namely of health, of proper action, and of the qualities following health, and of the excrements which follow health and proper action: [it inquires into] the causes of disease, of impaired action, of the qualities following diseases, and of the excrements of immoderate expulsion or suppression. Hygiene contains the method of diet, which consists in actions, things to be assumed, things falling from without, and things to be evacuated. Therapeutics, which contains the method of curing through medicines, they call pharmakeutiken pharmacology, and that which heals with the hands is called chirourgiken surgery. You see, therefore, that the entire method of healing is contained under addition and subtraction. That the definition taken from the parts embraces the chapters of the entire art is evident from this work of Galen which we have undertaken to explain, just as [it is evident] from that which is made from the notion of the end. For the end contains all things into which it is resolved; these are the chapters of the whole art, as is clear from Galen’s work on the constitution of the medical art. Thus far regarding the substantial definition. But we must discuss that which is taken from accidents; the Greeks call it noematiken noematical or intellectual definition, because (as I think) it presents the thing to the senses as if to be inspected and understood. It expresses the thing more verbosely: therefore it is peculiar to orators and poets.

B

C