Aphorisms of Hippocrates

Likewise, it will differ both with respect to its substance and with respect to its accidents, such as with respect to quantity, quality, action, passion, time, place, and region. But if we have looked to the disease and its antecedent, concomitant, and subsequent accidents, we shall distinguish the disease into parts, which are the beginning, increase, state, and decline. Therefore, one regimen is appropriate for the beginning, another for other times: one for the whole disease, as for a tertian fever, another for a quartan: and another for a simple tertian, another for a spurious one: another for a disease by essence, another by consent. Likewise, one [regimen] is necessary for antecedent accidents, another for concomitant ones, another for subsequent ones. What has been said of food, I assert the same of other non-natural things. Wherefore, since all these precepts regarding the regimen—which is the physician's most powerful instrument—must be diligently considered, and an error can be committed as much by reason of the food, as by reason of the physician, as by the assistants, and finally by the patient; it is no wonder if Hippocrates wrote that the experiment is dangerous. Furthermore, one must have the same consideration with respect to the second instrument, that is, the medicament: since a medicament, whether applied inside the body or externally, is considered with respect to itself and with respect to others, such as the nature of the patient, the disease, the causes, the concauses, and the symptoms. With respect to itself, in two ways: with respect to its nature and with respect to the consequences of its nature. In the nature of the medicament, its composition is considered first: whether it is thick or thin, earthy or watery, airy or fiery; then the temperament, that is, the primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary qualities; afterwards its humidities or humors; besides these, its parts and the whole: for there is not one nature in that in most medicaments there is a thick and a thin part, an external and an internal part, a superior