[p. 73]
are heavy drinkers, taking lunch,
| That is, taking more than one full meal every day. |
and inactive, or
athletic, industrious, eating much and drinking little.
PART 2
II. Using this evidence he must examine the
several problems that arise. For if a physician
know these things well, by preference all of them,
but at any rate most, he will not, on arrival at a
town with which he is unfamiliar, be ignorant of
the local diseases, or of the nature of those that
commonly prevail ; so that he will not be at a loss
in the treatment of diseases, or make blunders, as is
likely to be the case if he have not this knowledge
before he consider his several problems. As time
and the year passes he will be able to tell what
epidemic diseases will attack the city either in
summer or in winter, as well as those peculiar to
the individual which are likely to occur through
change in mode of life. For knowing the changes
of the seasons, and the risings and settings of the
stars, with the circumstances of each of these
phenomena, he will know beforehand the nature of
the year that is coming. Through these considerations
and by learning the times beforehand, he will
have full knowledge of each particular case, will
succeed best in securing health, and will achieve the
greatest triumphs in the practice of his art. If it
be thought that all this belongs to meteorology, he
will find out, on second thoughts, that the contribution
of astronomy to medicine is not a very small
one but a very great one indeed. For with the
seasons men's diseases, like their digestive organs,
suffer change.
PART 3
III. I will now set forth clearly how each of the
foregoing questions ought to be investigated, and
