MEDICAL PROSCENIA

THEREFORE, of medical actions there is given a Medical skill, which is called Medicine.

A decorative floral ornament appears here.

CHAPTER V.

What Medicine Is.

Definitions of Medicine by others.

Since it is established that Medicine exists, we must next see What it is. And indeed, in imitation of Aristotle, it is necessary to both propose and diligently examine the various Definitions of others, according to the different purpose of those who defined it, both of the ancients and of the moderns: and finally to subjoin our Own.

Among the ancients, Homer defines it thus: "For a physician is a man worth many other men, both for cutting out arrows and for spreading soothing medicines." original: "ἰητρὸς γὰρ ἀνὴρ πολλῶν ἀντάξιος ἄλλων..."

Hippocrates, in his commentary On the Art, disputing against those who denied that an Art is given, and who used among other things this argument, that many are healed without a physician and many are not healed with a physician, expressing the duty of the Physician by definition, says: "The task of Medicine is to altogether deliver the sick from their sufferings, and to blunt the severities of diseases, and not to lay hands on those who are overcome by diseases, knowing that in these cases medicine is powerless." In the commentary On Breaths, he likewise defines Medicine to be "the addition of what is lacking, and the removal of what is excessive." Also, in On Places in Man, he says the task of Medicine is to know "some things and not others." To which is perhaps similar what Galen in book 5 of On the Opinions original: "De Placitis" chapter 2, brings forward from Chrysippus: that the duty of the Physician is to be "within the passions and the healers," and that this formula was familiar to the Physicians of his time: So that he may have a perfect internal nature of the medicines, whether they agree among themselves or not. Also, "to know the properties (of bodies) and the opportunities (the times which are applied to the body)."

Timaeus Locrus, in his commentary On the Nature of the World: "Medicine is," he says, "to lead the powers into the strongest harmony, then at the same time to render the spirit pure and well-flowing." Whom Hippocrates perhaps seems to have imitated in the commentary On Food, where declaring the natural constitution of the body, of which the Physician ought to be the guardian, he says: "one flowing together, one breathing together, all things feeling together."

Plato in book 1 of The Republic says Medicine is the art providing for what is conducive to the body. Also, "That which effects health." Also, "That which prescribes to bodies the reasoning of medicines and foods and drinks." And in the Symposium, under the person of Eryximachus the Asclepiad, he defines it to be "the Science of those things which pertain to the amorous affections of the body" (namely to repletion and evacuation). For "base Love is to be driven away and guarded against: honorable Love is to be preserved and engendered." Indeed, that by the knowledge of both these loves the medical art was first established by Aesculapius. In the Laches, also, when Nicias had defined courage to be the science of things to be feared and things to be dared both in war and outside war, Socrates, encouraging him, says that Medicine also can be defined thus: that it is the "science of things to be feared and things to be dared."

The Ancient Physicians, according to Galen's commentary On Sects for Beginners: