()2 lUCIIARD MCKEON 



would make unnecessary the reading of any other book for 

 preparation or supplementation. Medicine, he argues, is more 

 necessary and of greater dignity than all the other arts, since 

 without health of body rationality is impossible, and \vithout 

 rationality science is impossible. But to understand this art, 

 dialectic and the arts of the quadrivium must first have 

 been mastered. Moreover, medicine covers the whole scope 

 of science, for science is divided into logic, ethics, and physics, 

 and medicine deals with all three of these parts, but falls 

 entirely under none. 



The Pantegni is divided into two parts, Theory and Practice, 

 and each in turn is divided into ten parts. Theory is per- 

 fect knowledge of things to be seized by intellect alone and 

 stored in memory for the control of those things; practice is 

 the manifestation of theory in things of sense and in manual 

 operations in accordance with understanding of the preexisting 

 theory. Theory is divided into three parts — the sciences of 

 natural things, of non-natural things, and of things outside 

 nature. Practice is the science of caring for the healthy and 

 curing the sick with diet, potion, and surgery. Natural things 

 are those necessary to the subsistence of bodies and pertaining 

 to their contruction or destruction. Natural things have seven 

 kinds of parts, three of which are common to sensible and 

 insensible things, that is, elements, complexions, and actions, 

 and four of which are proper to sensible things alone, that is, 

 humors, members, virtues, and spirits. There are six non- 

 natural causes — the air about the human body, motion and rest, 

 food and drink, sleep and waking, inanition and continence, and 

 the accidents of the soul. There are three things outside nature 

 — disease, the causes and signs of disease, and the accidents of 

 disease. The theoretic portion of the treatise proceeds syste- 

 matically from elements to complexions of elements to members 

 and virtues of members; then non-natural things and things 

 beyond nature are treated. 



The element, as philosophers define it, is a simple and mini- 

 mum particle of composite bodies. The elements include fire, 



