MEDICINE 171 



art to destroy disease, and they have not found it yet ; 

 but to the patient it appears that the medical art is 

 very short and the acquisition of science very slow, 

 while his disease is quick, and does not wait until the 

 doctor has found his art. If a physician is in possession 

 of true knowledge, then will his art make short work 

 with the disease, and the life of the patient will be com- 

 paratively long. Art is short, for it requires little time 

 to apply it when it is once in our possession ; but error 

 is long, and many die before finding the art " {Gommen- 

 taria in Aphorismas Hippocratis). 



"A physician must be a Philosopher; that is to say, 

 he must dare to use his own reason and not cling to 

 opinions and book-authorities, be they old or new. He 

 must above all be in possession of that faculty which is 

 called Intuition, and which cannot be acquired by blindly 

 following the footsteps of another ; he must be able to 

 see his own way. There are natural philosophers and 

 there are artificial philosophers. The former have a 

 knowledge of their own ; the latter have borrowed know- 

 ledge from their books. If you wish to be a true 

 physician, you must be able to do your own thinking, 

 and not merely employ the thoughts of others. What 

 ethers may teach you may be good enough to assist you 

 in your search for knowledge, but you should be able 

 to think for yourself, and not cling to the coat-tail of 

 any authority, no matter how big-sounding the title of 

 the latter may be " (Be Modo Fharmacandi). 



" The wisdom of our sophists and medicasters does 

 not consist in a knowledge of Nature, but in a knowledge 

 of what Aristoteles, Galen, Avicenna, and other accepted 

 authorities have supposed Nature to be ; they only know 

 the dead body of man, but not the living image pre- 

 sented by Nature ; they have become untruthful and 

 unnatural, and therefore their art is based upon their 

 own fancies and speculations, which they imagine to be 

 science. The true physician is a product of Nature, not 



