Aphorisms of Hippocrates

that they must overcome all those impediments with industry and diligence. This, however, if they have achieved it; if afterwards they execute what is opportune for the sake of recovering the health of the sick. But also the patient, the attendants, and the external circumstances must favor the work. But that human life is short and fragile, everyone knows. Hippocrates writes, however, in the book On the Law and in other places, that medicine is an art, and the most excellent of all. But that it is "long"—not with regard to the difficulty that it itself brings, but according to its own nature—must be considered. For Hippocrates does not feel that, just as life is short, the medical art is therefore long and difficult because it has a momentary opportunity for almost all operations; for if the matter were so, the difficulty of the art would vary in its circumstances. But he asserts that it is long by its own nature; and therefore it cannot be learned quickly. For he wrote in the book On the Places in Man: "To learn medicine quickly is not possible," because it is impossible for a constant and certain doctrine to exist within it. As, for example: he who has learned to write according to one method, which everyone teaches, knows it, and all who know it, know it equally; for the same thing, done similarly both now and not now, cannot become the contrary. But it is always exactly similar, and has no need of opportunity. Medicine, however, does not do the same thing now and not now, but does contrary things to the same [patient] by itself. He explains this afterwards with many examples, and teaches us that the same purgative medicine can make the stool soft now, but hard another time. This does not arise from the medicine, but is proper to the art, which, as it is a habit of the intellect, so it uses the same thing to achieve contrary results. Therefore, let us say that the medical art is called long in two ways: first, by itself; second, through something else. By itself, and by its own reason, it is established—for example, with a purgative medicine, so that the stool may be regulated: