Aphorisms of Hippocrates

Judgment and use generate axioms.

...vindicates the medicine of the Asclepiads the followers of Aesculapius, the god of healing from the injury of their new invention, which relied on judgment alone without experience) [proceeding] from things observed by use in the human body, and from judgment confirmed by those uses. As if to say: through various diseases arising from diverse causes, it has been noted that some were cured excellently by different excretions for the sake of health; you, therefore, when you institute the removal of humors by art, lead out such things as were accustomed to be excluded in such a disease by the effort of nature with euphoria ease/well-being. But

Whether he treats here of the quantity of the humor to be removed.

does Hippocrates also treat here of the quantity of the humor to be removed? We respond: when physicians say that humors are in error due to quantity, they mostly understand healthy juices when they are at fault due to quantity alone. Yet they assert that they are at fault due to quality, even if that does not happen without quantity, yet they are at fault most strongly due to quality. For their quantity would have pressured nature very little, unless a depraved quality was tiring it. Therefore, what sort of thing is to be purged, and how much is to be evacuated, [is determined] in another way.

III.

Phlebotomy bloodletting as a sign.

1 In those who are gymnastic athletes, extreme states of good health euexia good condition/robustness are dangerous, if they are at the limit, for they cannot 4 remain in the same state, 5 nor be still. 6 Since they do not remain still, 8 and they are not able 4 to progress toward the better, 6 it remains that they fall toward the worse. For this reason, it is advantageous to break up such a good condition not slowly, so that the body may take a beginning of nourishment again. 8 Nor 9 to lead excessive thinness to the extreme, 9 for it is dangerous: but to the limit 10 Nature 11 intended to sustain 11 this. 12 Likewise, 12 evacuations that lead to the extreme are dangerous; and, in turn, replenishments that are at the extreme are dangerous.