De morborum temporibus, Principum Medicorum Aphorismoi

A small woodcut illustration depicts a physician or scholar seated at a desk, gesturing toward a book or anatomical figure, while a second figure stands nearby.

WHEN in the treatment of any disease the knowledge of its times holds no less utility than necessity, I deemed that I would be performing a worthwhile task if I were to propose these statements for public συζήτησις discussion/debate: for I have borrowed the subject matter from the physicians, and this method of inquiry from the philosophers.

THESIS I.

The time of a disease is the movement of causes in a sick body.

EXPOSITION I.

1. Time here is age, which is said of living beings and diseases κατ’ ἀναλογίαν by analogy, just as πέψις digestion/ripening is said of morbid matter by μεταφορά metaphor: not by a single nature or in any other way.
2. The time of a disease is different from the time of administering medicine, which is the fifth of the curative indications.
3. For denoting the span of times, κίνησις movement is more suitable than μεταβολή change.
4. A cause is whatever possesses the power to harm: namely, the cause, the disease, and the symptom.
5. The dignity of medicine and the excellence of man have subjected only the human body to medicine.
6. Furthermore, the difficulty of treatment and the variety of diseases have separated Surgery from medicine as if it were a different form. 1. post. text. 30.
7. Medicine, however, is one, the subject of which is a body healable by art: its end, to heal: its effect, health according to art.

II.

The times of diseases are ἀρχή beginning, αὔξησις increase, ἀκμή acme/height, and παρακμή decline.
1. The ages of animals are childhood, puberty, youth, and old age: adolescence leading to puberty, καθιστική constitutive refers to the peak of development leading to the παρακμαστική decline-oriented stage, and both lead toward old age.
2. Plants also first burst from the earth: then they gradually grow and put forth leaves: soon they flower and bear fruit: finally, deprived of leaves and fruit, they wither. For the old age of animals is the αὔανοις withering of plants.

III.

In the beginning, the harmful thing starts, in the increase it grows, in the state it flourishes, and in the decline it decreases.

IV.

Not all healthy diseases have all these times.