PART 1
Whoever having undertaken to speak or write on Medicine, have first laid down for themselves some hypothesis to their argument, such as hot, or cold, or moist, or dry, or whatever else they choose (thus
reducing their subject within a narrow compass, and supposing only
one or two original causes of diseases or of death among mankind),
are all clearly mistaken in much that they say; and this is the more
reprehensible as relating to an art which all men avail themselves
of on the most important occasions, and the good operators and practitioners
in which they hold in especial honor. For there are practitioners,
some bad and some far otherwise, which, if there had been no such
thing as Medicine, and if nothing had been investigated or found out
in it, would not have been the case, but all would have been equally
unskilled and ignorant of it, and everything concerning the sick would
have been directed by chance. But now it is not so; for, as in all
the other arts, those who practise them differ much from one another
in dexterity and knowledge, so is it in like manner with Medicine.
Wherefore I have not thought that it stood in need of an empty hypothesis,
like those subjects which are occult and dubious, in attempting to
handle which it is necessary to use some hypothesis; as, for example,
with regard to things above us and things below the earth; if any
one should treat of these and undertake to declare how they are constituted,
the reader or hearer could not find out, whether what is delivered
be true or false; for there is nothing which can be referred to in
order to discover the truth.
