# REMEDIES

A physician who is well-versed in philosophy—as well as its handmaidens mathematics and astrology—and skilled in botany, anatomy, pharmacy, and chemistry, first devotes every effort to fostering and protecting human health while warding off the discomforts of illness. Next, he strives to ensure that a person does not slide into sickness; and if they should happen to be overcome by it, he eradicates the ailment using appropriate and indicated protections.

Before prescribing these aids, he first considers the affected part and carefully observes whether the disease is local or acting through sympathy with other parts of the body. Being expert in the signs of conditions and all their symptoms, categories, and causes, he can perform this task swiftly. Furthermore, a physician distinguished among the learned knows the signs of recovery or death and predicts whether a disease will end with or without a crisis. Indeed, he understands perfectly whether such a crisis will occur through hemorrhage, abscess, vomiting, bowel movement, urination, menstruation, hemorrhoids, or sweat. Being knowledgeable in the science of "critical days," he prescribes what must be done when a patient is suffering from a single affliction or is tossed about by complicated conditions and severe symptoms.

In the battle against disease, the physician proceeds with a threefold set of tools: diet, pharmacy, and surgery. Regarding diet, he teaches about healthy air and the quality, goodness, quantity, order, and timing of food. He then establishes routines for exercise and rest, sleep and wakefulness, fullness and emptiness, and even which emotional states should be avoided.

Regarding pharmacy, he carefully considers the quality of his defenses—whether they should be balanced or rather hot, cold, moist, or dry, according to the first, second, third, or fourth degree. He weighs whether they consist of fine or coarse parts and whether they should be sharp, astringent, opening, dispersing, thickening, softening, hardening, cleansing, cauterizing, drawing, protective against poison, pus-promoting, plaster-like, deobstructive, scarring, eroding, purging, thickening, extracting, gluing, cutting, repelling, flesh-growing, strengthening, diuretic, menstrual-inducing or suppressing, sweat-inducing, stone-breaking, milk-generating, expectorating, cough-soothing, sleep-inducing, pain-mitigating, aphrodisiac, seed-producing, digestive, burn-healing, or intended to cook and expel bile, phlegm, and melancholy. He also prescribes the dose, order, location, and timing of these remedies.

It is truly a matter of wonder that the medicines used to eliminate human ailments are drawn from everything created in the entire world. A defense prescribed by a physician is either a "simple" or a "compound." A simple is that which is produced by nature; these are twofold: animate or inanimate. The animate includes the vegetative and the sensitive. The vegetative category encompasses trees, shrubs, sub-shrubs, and herbs. The sensitive is either sanguineous or bloodless. Sanguineous beings are of two types: rational and irrational. The rational being is man, from whose parts the physician also extracts many remedies. The irrational are either aerial, terrestrial, aquatic, or amphibious. Bloodless creatures are fourfold: the soft-bodied, insects, crustaceans, and shellfish. Finally, the inanimate are generated either in the air or within the bowels of the earth, and these are fourfold: metal, stone, earth, and congealed juices. From these simples, other medicines are prepared, which must be varied according to the mind of Galen. As he writes, there is a vast difference between human bodies, both in terms of their natural temperament and in terms of changes in age and lifestyle; therefore, no single compounded medicine can suit everyone.

Consequently, the physician prepares soothing agents, syrups, electuaries, fruit-pastes, decoctions, and solvents, to be administered either in substance, as an infusion, or as a bolus or potion exhi