Book 1
pr
But disciples of Themison, if they hold their precepts to be of constant validity, are reasoners even more than anybody else; for if a man des not hold all the tenets that another reasoner approves, he does not forthwith have to assume a different name for his art, if (and this is the essential point) he does rely not only on written authority, but also upon reasoning from theory. But if, which is nearer to the truth, the Art of Medicine admits of scarcely any universal precepts, reasoners are in the same position as those who depend upon experience alone, all the more because whether the disease has braced or relaxed is what the most uninstructed can see. But if a remedy which loosens a body braced up, or tightens a loosened body, has been deduced by a reasoning from theory, the practitioner is a reasoner; if (as the man who denies himself to be a reasoner must admit) he acts from experience, he is an Empiric. Thus according to Themison, knowledge of a disease is outside the Art, and medicine is confined to practice; nor has there been added anything to what Empirics profess, but something taken away; for reasoners from theory gaze about over a multiplicity of matters, Empirics look to circumstances the most simple, and nothing more than commonplaces. For in like manner those who treat cattle and horses, since it is impossible to learn from dumb animals particulars of their complaints, depend only upon common characteristics; so also do foreigners as they are ignorant of reasoning subtleties look rather to common characteristics of disease. Again, those who take charge of large hospitals, because they cannot pay full attention to individuals, resort to these common characteristics. I vow, the ancients knew all this, but were not content therewith; therefore even the oldest authority, Hippocrates, said that in healing it was necessary to take note both of common and of particular characteristics. Indeed these very Methodici, even within their professed limitations, cannot be consistent; for there are divers kinds of constricting and relaxing diseases, those in which there is a flux being the more easy to observe. For it is one thing to vomit blood, another bile, another food; it is one thing to suffer from diarrhoea, another from dysentery; one thing to be relaxed through sweating, another to be wasted by consumption. Humour may break out into particular parts, such as the eyes or the ears; from a risk of this kind there is no human member free. No one of these occurrences is treated in the same way as another.
