Hippocrates, Vol. IV (Loeb Classical Library)

insists on the importance of health and of making efforts to recover from illnesses. Here Regimen in Health ends.

Several points need careful consideration:

(1) Regimen in Health proper ends abruptly and is apparently unfinished;
(2) This unfinished work has two short fragments tacked on to it, the second of which is but slightly connected, and the first quite unconnected, with the subject matter of the first seven chapters;
(3) These fragments are taken from the beginnings of other works in the Corpus.

Is it possible for such a conglomerate to be the result of design? What author or editor could be so stupid as to complete an incomplete work by such unsuitable additions? What particular kind of accident is responsible nobody could say for certain, but it is at least likely that some librarian, and not an author, added the two fragments. It must be remembered that the parts of a book that get detached most easily, whether the books be a roll or composed of leaves, are the beginning and the end. These places are also the most convenient for making additions. Suppose that the end of Regimen in Health was lost and the beginnings of copies of Diseases II and of Affections became detached; surely it is not unreasonable to suppose that a librarian preserved the latter by adding them to the former.

Nature of Man is similar in construction, but the fragments added to the main piece are longer; Regimen in Health, in fact, is itself one of them.