182 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



CHAPTER II 



Division of the Knowledge of the Human Body into the Medicinal, Cosmetic, 

 Athletic, and the Voluptuary Arts. Division of Medicine into Three 

 Functions; viz., the Preservation of Health, the Cure of Diseases, and 

 the Prolongation of Life. The last distinct from the two former 



THE doctrine of the human body divides itself accord 

 ing to the perfections of the body, whereto it is 

 subservient. These perfections are four: viz., 1st, 

 health; 2d, comeliness; 3d, strength; and 4th, pleasure: to 

 which correspond as relatives: 1st, the arts of medicine; 

 2d, beautifying; 3d, gymnastics; and 4th, the art of ele 

 gance, which Tacitus calls eruditum luxum. 1 Medicine 

 is a noble art, and honorably descended, according to the 

 poets, who make Apollo the primary god, and his son ^Es- 

 culapius, whom they also deify, the first professor thereof: 

 for as, in natural things, the sun is the author and fountain 

 of life, so the physician, who preserves life, seems a second 

 origin thereof. But medicine receives far greater honor from 

 the works of our Saviour, who was physician both to soul 

 and body, and made the latter the standing subject of his 

 miracles, as the soul was the constant subject of his doc 

 trine. 



Of all the things that nature has created, the human 

 body is most capable of relief, though this relief be the 

 most liable to error. For as the subtilty and variety of 

 the subject affords many opportunities of cure, so likewise 

 a great facility of mistake. And, therefore, as this art, es 

 pecially at present, stands among the most conjectural ones, 

 so the inquiry into it is to be placed among the most subtile 

 and difficult. Neither are we so senseless as to imagine, 

 with Paracelsus and the alchemists, that there are to be 



1 Annals, xvi. 18. 



