Declamation of the Philosopher, Physician, and Orator

the number of professors, because it is fitting that they first profess to despise mercenary labor. This is enough for the philosopher, who seems to be too urgently pressed and stirred, warned by a true castigation. I shall pass next to the physician, whom I understand to have descended into this cause with great confidence, for his art is in no way unlike philosophy. That is to say, it is varied, inconsistent, patched together, and often not a little pernicious. In order to immediately strike and deflate this in the vestibule of the dissertation, is there not more fighting and contention among physicians than among philosophers, since they proceed toward different ways of healing?

Against physicians

Origin of diseases

Hippocrates, the breath of diseases

Hippocrates

Erasistratus

Asclepiades

Practice is the effective teacher

Triple medicine

Hippocrates logical

Archigenes the Methodic

To Hippocrates, the cause of the original disease seems to be spiritus breath/spirit or flatulence, which he calls the father and grandfather of all diseases. To Herophilus, all vice seemed to be in the fluids. To Erasistratus, it occurs if blood is transfused into the arteries—that is, the veins—which are adapted for spirit (the veins which more recent physicians call pulsatile). To Asclepiades, however, it pleased that the origin of diseases is when flowing particles, by stopping, close the path through invisible pores and block the passages.

In addition to this, since health consists most in the digestion of foods, and the stomach is rightly called the father of the family and king of the whole human body, they are most discordant in this part as well. Erasistratus contends that foods are ground up in the belly; Plistonicus argues they putrefy; it pleases Hippocrates that foods are digested through heat, which Galen, Avicenna, and the schools of the modern physicians confirm. Asclepiades, however, argues that nothing is digested, but rather that the raw matter is distributed throughout the body just as it was taken in.

Add to this that some say medicine is rational; others have placed it only in use and experiments, just as use is the most effective teacher in treatments as it is in all other arts. Hence, some are called logicians, as if rational; others are empirical, from experiments, such as Serapion, Apollonius, and Heraclides. There are also Methodics, named from a certain way they follow. On account of this, Ausonius said in the Grypho Ternario Triple Riddle that medicine is triple in that verse: "The triple form of healing also: which [is] reason, method, and to each its name from experience."

There are also Dogmatics, who have their own decrees or tenets without which no sect can exist; Galen approves of these most, by whom the Empirics are disapproved, for he says that Herophilus and Philippus were primarily Empirics, that is, followers of experience. While Hippocrates, Diocles of Carystus, and Erasistratus followed the logical heresy, that is, the rational sect. The leaders of the Methodics were Archigenes and Themison. Regarding them, I think the satirist referring to the Roman poet Juvenal felt this way when writing: "He calls Archigenes and tosses the heavy cloaks; likewise how many sick people Themison killed in the autumn." There was also Prodicus of Selymbria, who instituted iatraleptice the art of healing by anointing.