A large horizontal woodcut headpiece depicts a pastoral landscape with figures, trees, and architectural elements, framed by decorative scrollwork.

AVICENNA OF THE ARABS

PRINCE OF PHYSICIANS.

FOURTH BOOK OF THE CANON.

ON PARTICULAR DISEASES,

which, when they occur, are not appropriated to one member.

FROM THE VERSION OF GERARD OF CREMONA,

AND THE CASTIGATION OF ANDREA ALPAGO OF BELLUNO.

ILLUSTRATED LONG AGO WITH ANNOTATIONS

BY GIOVANNI COSTA AND GIOVANNI PAOLO MONGIO.

Now truly revised by the same COSTA, and augmented in some places with new observations.

First treatise on ephemeral fever.

On the definition of fever and the kinds of fever. Ch. I.

An ornamental woodcut initial 'F' depicts floral motifs.FEVER is an extraneous heat ignited in the heart, and proceeding from it through the mediation of spirit and blood, through the arteries and veins into the whole body: and they are inflamed in it with an inflammation that harms natural operations, not like the heat of anger and labor, a B. where it does not reach the point that it is ignited and harms the operations. Another reading: so that it is ignited or firmly established and harms the operations. [when it is not brought to an end, and impedes the operation, such that it is retained.] ² And there are some men who divide fevers into two primary divisions, namely into fever as a disease and fever as an accident, and they place the fevers of apostema abscess/swelling in the genus of fever as an accident. And the intention of their discourse is that a fever of disease is that between which and the cause, which is not a disease, there is no medium: just as the fever of putrefaction, for putrefaction is its cause without a medium, and putrefaction is not in itself a disease, rather it is a cause of disease. A fever of an apostema is an accident existing for the apostema while it is an apostema, following it, and an apostema is a disease in itself. And it is in the power of a contradictor to say that if for that reason,

that the fever of an apostema follows its heat, and follows from its pain, b B. it seems. [it is similar,] so that it may be a fever as an accident, then it is necessary that most ephemeral fevers be an accident, and if it itself follows the putrefaction that is in the apostema, then the apostema is not its primary cause, as it is an apostema, rather as far as the putrefaction that is in it: therefore its cause, which is essential, is putrefaction, and an apostema is not its cause except by accident. And we say that if they have not signified this by fever as an accident, rather they have not understood by it except that it itself follows this apostema, c B. it is found [and they find it] through the discovery of the apostema: similarly therefore is the disposition of fevers of putrefaction by comparison to putrefaction. Truly, occupation with such contradictions is that which does not contribute anything to the science of medicine, and causes the physician to proceed from his art to inquisitions which perhaps impede him from his art. Let us proceed therefore according to that which is customary. Let us say therefore, because the fevers of apostemata and obstructions are fevers that are accidents, and other fevers are diseases, then it is appropriate that we say that, because all things that are in the body of man are of three kinds, namely members.