Aphorisms of Hippocrates

IN BOOK I. OF THE APHORISMS OF HIPPOCRATES.

Therefore, we shall moderate medicines using these rationales.

12. For the elderly and children are held under the dominance of phlegm, young people under bile; another age is prone to blood, another to melancholy. The elderly and children are not to be tried with heavy medicines because they are easily exhausted, and [the latter] because they are [already] exhausted.

Diseases indicate the manner of treatment and symptoms. 13. [One must consider] whether the cause acknowledges a poisonous force or a juice capable of maturation pepasmós maturation/ripening, and those which can be excluded καλῶς well/properly by remedies that increase the power of nature. And diseases themselves almost speak their own causes. Burning fevers arise from bile, just as the tertian fever; quartan fevers are born from melancholy. An intemperance without matter does not admit of purging. Add the part obsessed by the disease, and the changes of the periods, and the ideas and modes of the paroxysms. Finally, symptoms will speak about which humors are abundant. They are deduced from the changed quality of the body, in color, character, and bulk. Thus, if the body is soiled by yellowness, it will be an indication that bile is rampant; if it swells with a leaden pallor, it will proclaim that a cold juice is at fault. Secondly, they are deduced from excrements, which are examined in substance and quality. For example, if thick and viscous things emerge from the body, phlegm will be troublesome there. Thirdly, from impaired actions. For example, if the pulse moves very quickly and very frequently, and on the contrary, if it moves rapidly, we will judge that this mostly happens from a hot matter. Therefore, whatever juice tires the body, that ought to be purged: as Galen says here, if the serum of the blood exceeds the measure, it should be evacuated; if gas, it should be expelled; if phlegm, this—and not blood—should be led out.

Judgment and use generate axioms. Hippocrates demonstrated the firmest axioms in the book On Ancient Medicine (where he indicates against Gorgias of Leontini and the disciples of Polus...