E P I S T L E

In these books, he provided most copiously the precepts not only of that part which concerns diet and that which concerns drugs, but also of that which heals by hand surgery. However, I see it being doubted by many whether Cornelius practiced the art, with others thinking he lacked practical experience: either because he set forth certain things that refute the art, such as those things he handed down regarding the pulse of the veins, the signs of urine, and unequal days, following Asclepiades; or because in setting down and constituting his precepts, he went very far from the custom of those who wrote about medicine before him. Others, however, believe that he could not have known so many things, so signally and articulately, and finally so appositely to practice—such that he is sometimes detailed in describing the way and the method of performing the acts of the practitioner—unless he had learned it otherwise than by thinking, hearing, and reading. Although the reason and authority of those who deny that Cornelius was a physician move me little—for it is certain that Asclepiades, and Themison his disciple, and Thessalus, who was so often and so vehemently condemned by Galen, strayed from the tenets and doctrine of the ancients, even though they all practiced medicine by experience itself—it is not strange, therefore, if in such an erratic discipline...