[p. 17]
ordinary folk when they are sick or in pain. Now
to learn by themselves how their own sufferings
come about and cease, and the reasons why they get
worse or better, is not an easy task for ordinary
folk ; but when these things have been discovered
and are set forth by another, it is simple. For
merely an effort of memory is required of each man
when he listens to a statement of his experiences.
But if you miss being understood by laymen,
and fail to put your hearers in this condition, you
will miss reality. Therefore for this reason also
medicine has no need of any postulate.
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
