Book 1
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It was afterwards, they proceed, when the remedies had already been discovered, that men began to discuss the reasons for them: the Art of Medicine was not a discovery following upon reasoning, but after the discovery of the remedy, the reason for it was sought out. They ask, too, does reasoning teach the same as experience? If the same, it was needless; if something else, then it was even opposed to it: nevertheless, at first remedies had to be explored with the greatest care; now, however, they have been explored already; there were neither new sorts of diseases to be found out, nor was a novel remedy wanted. For even if there happened nowadays some unknown form of malady, nevertheless the practitioner had not to theorize over obscure matters, but straightway would see to which disease it came nearest, then would make trial of remedies similar to those which have succeeded often in a kindred affection, and so through its similarities find help; that is not to say that a practitioner had no need to take counsel, and that an irrational animal was capable of exhibiting this art, but that these conjectures about concealed matters are of no concern because it does not matter what produces the disease but what relieves it; nor does it matter how digestion takes place, but what is best digested, whether concoction comes about from this cause or that, and whether the process is concoction or merely distribution. We had no need to inquire in what way we breathe, but what relieves laboured breathing; not what may move the blood-vessels, but what the various kinds of movements signify. All this was to be learnt through experiences; and in all theorizing over a subject it is possible to argue on either side, and so cleverness and fluency may get the best of it; it is not, however, by eloquence but by remedies that diseases are treated. A man of few words who learns by practice to discern well, would make an altogether better practitioner than he who, unpractised, over-cultivates his tongue.
