PART 2
For my part, I approve of paying attention to everything relating
to the art, and that those things which can be done well or properly
should all be done properly; such as can be quickly done should be
done quickly; such as can be neatly done should be done neatly; such
operations as can be performed without pain should be done with the
least possible pain; and that all other things of the like kind should
be done better than they could be managed by the attendants. But I
would more especially commend the physician who, in acute diseases,
by which the bulk of mankind are cut off, conducts the treatment better
than others. Acute diseases are those which the ancients named pleurisy,
pneumonia, phrenitis, lethargy, causus, and the other diseases allied
to these, including the continual fevers. For, unless when some general
form of pestilential disease is epidemic, and diseases are sporadic
and [not] of a similar character, there are more deaths from these
diseases than from all the others taken together. The vulgar, indeed,
do not recognize the difference between such physicians and their
common attendants, and are rather disposed to commend and censure
extraordinary remedies. This, then, is a great proof that the common
people are most incompetent, of themselves, to form a judgment how
such diseases should be treated: since persons who are not physicians
pass for physicians
[p. 62] owing most especially to these diseases, for it
is an easy matter to learn the names of those things which are applicable
to persons laboring under such complaints. For, if one names the juice
of ptisan, and such and such a wine, and hydromel, the vulgar fancy
that he prescribes exactly the same things as the physicians do, both
the good and the bad, but in these matters there is a great difference
between them.
