ON CONCORD

Fernel, Method of Healing, Book 4, in the preface.

can subsist in us, says Fernel, for which Nature has not likewise brought forth some opposite thing as a remedy. There is no scarcity of remedies anywhere, but for the most part, there is our disgraceful ignorance of them. But a remedy in anatomy is called similar because it possesses signs similar to those signs which are in the human disease. Hence, it is also permissible to say that similar diseases are cured by similar things, and contrary diseases by contrary things: and indeed, that they are cured by similar things because of the similar signs, but by contrary things because of the contrary Nature fighting against the disease. What could be said more briefly, more roundly, or more wisely in consultations than if a physician says, and proves by demonstration with signs applied, "This disease is of that remedy, and that remedy is of this disease"? The knowledge of properties alone, says the same Fernel, exercises the things themselves: all the rest are hardly anything more than words. When I set these things before my own eyes, I am already almost weary and vehemently regret my past labors: and I wish for the same thing that On the Hidden Causes of Things, Book II, Chapter 18.