PART 3
III. For the art of medicine would never have been
discovered to begin with, nor would any medical research
have been conducted--for there would have
been no need for medicine--if sick men had profited
by the same mode of living and regimen as the food,
drink and mode of living of men in health, and if
there had been no other things for the sick better
than these. But the fact is that sheer necessity has
caused men to seek and to find medicine, because
sick men did not, and do not, profit by the same
regimen as do men in health. To trace the matter
yet further back, I hold that not even the mode of
living and nourishment enjoyed at the present time
by men in health would have been discovered, had a
man been satisfied with the same food and drink as
satisfy an ox, a horse, and every animal save man,
for example the products of the earth--fruits, wood
and grass. For on these they are nourished, grow,
and live without pain, having no need at all of any
other kind of living. Yet I am of opinion that to
begin with man also used this sort of nourishment.
Our present ways of living have, I think, been
[p. 19]
discovered and elaborated during a long period of
time. For many and terrible were the sufferings
of men from strong and brutish living when they
partook of crude foods, uncompounded and possessing
great powers
1--the same in fact as men
would
suffer at the present day, falling into violent pains and
diseases quickly followed by death. Formerly indeed
they probably suffered less, because they were used to
it, but they suffered severely even then. The majority
naturally perished, having too weak a constitution,
while the stronger resisted longer, just as at the
present time some men easily deal with strong foods,
while others do so only with many severe pains.
For this reason the ancients too seem to me to
have sought for nourishment that harmonised with
their constitution, and to have discovered that which
we use now. So from wheat, after steeping it,
winnowing, grinding and sifting, kneading, baking,
they produced bread, and from barley they produced
cake. Experimenting with food they boiled or
baked, after mixing, many other things, combining
the strong and uncompounded with the weaker
components so as to adapt all to the constitution and
power of man, thinking that from foods which, being
too strong, the human constitution cannot assimilate
when eaten, will come pain, disease, and death,
while from such as can be assimilated will come
nourishment, growth and health. To this discovery
and research what juster or more appropriate name
[p. 21]
could be given than medicine, seeing that it has
been discovered with a view to the health, saving
and nourishment of man, in the place of that
mode of living from which came the pain, disease and
death?
