PART 9
IX. If the matter were simple, as in these instances,
and both sick and well were hurt by too
strong foods, benefited and nourished by weaker
foods, there would be no difficulty. For recourse to
weaker food must have secured a great degree of
safety. But as it is, if a man takes insufficient food,
the mistake is as great as that of excess, and harms
the man just as much. For abstinence has upon
the human constitution a most powerful effect, to
enervate, to weaken and to kill. Depletion produces
many other evils, different from those of repletion, but
just as severe. Wherefore the greater complexity of
these ills requires a more exact method of treatment.
For it is necessary to aim at some measure. But no
measure, neither number nor weight, by reference to
which knowledge can be made exact, can be found
except bodily feeling. Wherefore it is laborious to
make knowledge so exact that only small mistakes
are made here and there. And that physician who
makes only small mistakes would win my hearty
praise. Perfectly exact truth is but rarely to be seen.
For most physicians seem to me to be in the same
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case as bad pilots ; the mistakes of the latter are
unnoticed so long as they are steering in a calm, but,
when a great storm overtakes them with a violent
gale, all men realise clearly then that it is their
ignorance and blundering which have lost the ship.
So also when bad physicians, who comprise the great
majority, treat men who are suffering from no serious
complaint, so that the greatest blunders would not
affect them seriously--such illnesses occur very often,
being far more common than serious disease--they
are not shown up in their true colours to laymen if
their errors are confined to such cases ; but when
they meet with a severe, violent and dangerous
illness, then it is that their errors and want of skill
are manifest to all. The punishment of the impostor,
whether sailor or doctor, is not postponed, but follows
speedily.
