IOANNIS MARINELLI

COMMENTARY ON THE APHORISMS OF HIPPOCRATES

FIRST.

Life is short, and the art is long, but the opportunity is fleeting, the experiment is perilous, the judgment is difficult. It is necessary not only for the physician himself to do what is appropriate, but also for the patient, the attendants, and the external circumstances.

Since there are many things that can remove a physician from the correct method of healing—such as the course of life, which nature has circumscribed as meager for man; the length of the medical art; the opportunity that is perpetually fleeing; and the judgment which is difficult, indeed, unless experienced, while experience itself is perilous—therefore Hippocrates in this aphorism, which is as it were a prologue and the proposition of the whole book, wishes this precept of duty to be diligently held by physicians.