Disputationes chymico-medicae

The Philosopher, or the Physician Consulted by Nature.

...Within these boundaries, when the speech has finally proven that the Philosopher, or the Nature-consultant Physician, is a prudent man skilled in moving nature, the speech shall rest of its own accord.

It is a great work, Listeners, a great and difficult work to move Nature—the Parent of all those fleeting things which are, which were, and which will be—and to govern her so that she comes willingly and gladly to the aid of our body, which is subject to infinite difficulties of atrocious diseases and the robberies of afflictions. For Natura morborum Medicatrices Nature is the healer of diseases: and no one heals a disease, no one protects health, no one shapes the state of life; nature alone heals, protects, and shapes; nature alone acts as the midwife. If she is skillfully excited through nature and by a sagacious Philosopher, she expels the enemy most hostile to her and makes health return as if by the right of postliminium returning to one's original state or rights. Truly, to excite Nature is the most difficult of all things: for on that alone the entire hinge of Medicine turns. Therefore, he who can most faithfully undergo such an arduous, such a difficult province, and adorn it magnificently—how many-sided a knowledge of things must he be imbued with! How much wisdom is needed for him who is to be the minister and augur of Nature; the master of this universe and of those things which are subjected to the eyes; the tamer of diseases, and finally a most holy example of all virtues! The Fathers of Eloquence deny that their Orator can be engaged with enough gravity and magnificence in Forensic and Political causes unless the knowledge of many and great things has first filled his breast. If they were so diligent and particular in such a meager matter, where nothing was at stake but either the city, or reputation, or money, or at most life: shall we name, hold, and represent any unpolished man, rude and ignorant of the good arts, as a Philosopher or a Nature-consultant Physician? None of us entrusts our estates to a bailiff who is inexperienced in rural matters; no one entrusts the management and dispensing of household goods...

...to one unskilled in protecting the family property; no one commends a building to one most foreign to Architecture. Clearly, whatever must be entrusted to another's faith for proper care, who is so stupid and sluggish that he does not diligently seek out a man well-skilled and intelligent in that matter? Is the health of our body alone, then, either so ready and easy that it requires no wisdom of treatment or master? Or is it so meager and vile that less diligence should be attributed to it alone than is attributed to even the smallest things? These are the practices of the unskillful common people: to whom, occasionally carried away into the trackless paths of opinions, while their eyes grow dark at the truth—just as the Nycticorax night-owl at the Sun—it is quite familiar to make an Elephant out of a fly. Prudent men are prohibited from hanging upon the depraved judgment of the depraved multitude: for these things, implanted with deeper roots, require more severe investigations.

Therefore, with all things diligently called into counsel, a twofold knowledge of things seems very necessary for the excellent Philosopher or Nature-consultant Physician: one of those things which are proper to this duty; the other of those things which, since they provide the greatest help for first perceiving those former things successfully, must be assumed from without. The former is this very Profession, in which he whom we judge worthy of such a great duty ought to excel; the latter embraces all human disciplines and other excellent matters besides. For so that the Nature-consultant Physician can watch over his committed duty more correctly without distaste and error, he will rightly be held the most inept of all who applies his hand to moving nature, unless he has been taught to give order to confused things, to hold a torch before obscure things, to bring light into hidden things, to impart knowledge to doubtful things, and to eloquently announce necessary, useful, and pleasant things. Therefore, although a Physician may possess all his things in some way from the light of nature, nevertheless, so that he may treat, operate, and bring forth individual things which belong to the light of nature skillfully and not confusedly, prudently and not lazily, purely and not barbarously, clearly and not obscurely, no one shall free him from the supports of the arts. Just as...