GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Intro

A vertical pencil bracket encompasses the following six numbered points.

(1) Diseases have a natural course, which the physician must thoroughly understand^1 so as to decide whether the outcome will be favorable or fatal.
(2) Diseases are caused by a disturbance^2 in the composition of the body's constituents. This disturbance is connected to atmospheric and climatic conditions.
(3) Nature attempts to bring these irregularities back to a normal state, apparently through the action of innate heat, which "cooks" (or "ripens") the "raw" humors of the body.
(4) There are "critical" days at fixed times when the battle between nature and disease reaches a crisis.
(5) Nature may win, in which case the morbid materials in the body are either evacuated or carried off in an apostasis^3—or the "ripening" of the morbid elements may fail to occur, in which case the patient dies.
(6) All the physician can do for the patient is to give nature a chance, removing through regimen anything that might hinder nature in her beneficial work.

It might be argued that this doctrine is as hypothetical as the theory that all diseases come from the air. In a sense, it is. All judgments, however simple, that attempt to explain sensory perceptions are hypotheses. But hypotheses may be scientific or philosophical—the latter term being used here to denote the character of early Greek philosophy.

^1 This knowledge is prognosis (foreknowledge).
^2 It is unclear whether this disturbance is regarded as quantitative, qualitative, or both.
^3 This term will be explained later. Roughly speaking, it means the collection and expulsion of morbid elements at a fixed point in the body. I translate it as "abscession," a term that suggests "abscess," perhaps the most common form of an abscession.