MEDICAL PROSCENIA

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CHAPTER IV.

Whether Medicine Exists.

Although it can be established from what has been brought forward so far concerning the name of Medicine that human medicine exists and is given, nevertheless, because we did not treat this question en of its existence there explicitly, but only to explain the various meanings of the name, let us now pursue it as the foundation for the rest. When a certain Sophist was praising Hercules among the Spartans, Archidamus, or someone else, cried out: "Does anyone actually speak ill of him?" But for us, inquiring whether Medicine is given, that fear will not be necessary, since Hippocrates also wished to defend the same in a peculiar commentary On the Art against the slanderers of his time. Nor are there lacking in our age men who, on account of a diversity of opinions, think that it exists only in the imagination and that no truth underlies it. Proceeding therefore to our purpose, and assuming those things which were brought forward by Hippocrates to establish the art, let us deduce the essence of Medicine itself: that is, that such a habitus acquired skill or disposition falls within the human intellect. This is deduced by Resolution, drawing an argument from Actions to the Skill, since from the fact that energeian activity or actualization is given outside the intellect either in act or by its own nature, it can be necessarily inferred that it is also given within the human intellect, either in act or in potentiality. For whatever action, administered in the same way, provides a certain effect, it is probable that a certain skill of the same is also given. Thus, if it is established by experience that fish are caught in the same way, there will certainly be given a certain art of catching them. Let us therefore argue thus:

Daily experience, by the perception of its assistance, teaches that examples of medications or medical actions are given, and indeed that they are frequent and illustrious. For Nature, a kind parent, has provided most liberally for her children as much regarding medicines as regarding foods, not by rash or fortuitous chance, but by a certain and natural inclination and demonstration. One may notice this from the brute animals, which, on account of that knowledge of their own good and evil implanted in them by nature, are accustomed to apply not just anything they encounter, but only certain and selected things: for example, dogs use couch grass original: "canariam", swallows use celandine original: "chelidoniam", and deer use dittany original: "dictamnum". Much more illustriously, the most sensible of men, even from all antiquity, have observed these native powers of remedies in human bodies in one or another individual, and through epilogism reasoning from experience have adapted them to others as well. Thus, although they first happened upon them by chance, by later observation they clearly recognized that they were not fortuitous. Therefore, that which the Brutes recognize by the guidance of Nature, and which those among Men who claim the first rank for themselves on account of the integrity of their senses and sharpness of wit have found to truly exist by constant observation, it is necessary that it be given according to both sense and reason. So that whoever would wish to deny this, lacks it adokōs unexpectedly or shamelessly and anaōs senselessly, and on account of this his stupidity or petulance...