Aphorisms of Hippocrates

by experience and reason. In a physician is required a singular knowledge of healing: supreme virtue, authority, and an almost divine felicity.

11. By obeying and faithfully reporting: which are the two duties of patients.

12. Such as pharmacists, clinical women, and surgeons.

13. Air, linens, coverings, bed, odors, messages, noise, and things of this kind.

That is, I make a pact with you on this condition, that my Aphorisms will be true, if nothing is neglected in these three things. Yet we strongly commend experience, stabilized by judgment. For experience is the most efficacious master of all things; indeed, Pliny says that such experiments are best trusted. Nay, Cicero says, “Experience surpasses the precepts of all masters,” and deservedly he exclaims this in Homer:

Digression & Good praise of Experience.

De Orat.

noeō ki oida hekasta
Esthla te ki ta chēria.
I know and understand individually
What is good and what is evil.

lib. 1.

This has certainly brought forth all arts, as Manilius says.
Through various experiences, practice has made art,
with example pointing the way.

But who is its parent? Time.

Ovid. 6. Metam.

Experience comes from late years.
Gēraskō, (said Solon,) d' aiei polla didaskomeno.
Constantly learning, I hasten toward old age.

II.

The token of purgation.

In the disturbances of the belly and in the vomits that occur automatically, if they are purged as they ought to be purged, it is beneficial, and they bear it with ease. But if not, the opposite. Thus also the evacuation of vessels, if it occurs as it ought to occur,