The Volume and Work Beyond Wonder

The first faculty or sect is called the Naturalists: for the reason that they treat with medicine according to nature alone, just as the concordances original: concordantzen; these were scholastic textbooks that gathered and harmonized the opinions of famous ancient doctors into single summaries agree: such as cold with heat, moist with dry, fullness with emptying, fasting with filling, and the like, just as nature teaches us to drive out each thing through its opposite. Of this sect were Avicenna, Galen, Rhazes, and their commentators, and the like.

The second sect is called the Specifics: for the reason that they heal all diseases through a specific form original: formam specificam and through a specific essence original: Ens specificum; the "inner core" or vital power of a substance. For example: a magnet draws iron to itself, which it does not do by the nature of its [elemental] qualities, but by its specific [power] original: specifica alone. In this way, these physicians heal all diseases in the specific cure. Of these were the experimenters and those you call empirics empirics: doctors who relied on practical experience and observation rather than the theoretical "humoral" systems of the university-trained Naturalists because of your mockery: and also all Naturalists for the reason that they purge purge (purgiren): to clear the body of waste or humors, often via laxatives or vomiting, which comes from the specific form and does not belong to the Naturalists; thus they fall from one sect into the other.

The third are called Characterists: for the reason that, through their characters character (Character): symbolic signs, inscriptions, or spoken words believed to hold magical or healing power, they make all diseases healthy, as their treatise original: Libell and their cure demonstrate. This occurs with such power as when one commands someone to run, and he runs; that happens through the word: so also is this [healing] through the word, which is a character. And their founders and practitioners were Albertus Magnus, the astrologers, philosophers, and many more of them.

The fourth are called the Spiritualists: for the reason that they can command and compel the spirits of herbs and roots to release the sick person whom they have captured and afflicted. Just as when a judge puts someone in the stocks original: Stock; a wooden restraint for prisoners, also used as a general term for a jail, then he alone is that person's physician: