Physicians

Animals share in these spirits, and the physicians did not affirm a further spirit for man, because their aim was to set out that to which health and sickness attach;

on the doctrines of the physicians concerning the spirit (rūḥ) and the soul.

As for the soul (nafs), they did not mention it explicitly in medicine, since in medicine they mentioned only the elements, the temperaments (amzijah), the organs, the spirits, the faculties and the acts.

the happiness of the skilled physician is not like the happiness of the deft secretary, and the happiness of one learned in many branches is not like the happiness of one learned in a single branch — I mean that, though they all order their acts, these differ according to the subject matters they investigate.

whereas the likeness of the first is that of the learned physician who does not apply what he knows, so that illness befalls him and knowledge does not profit him.

The spirit (1), with the physicians, is a subtle vaporous body formed from the subtlety of the humours and their vaporousness, as the humours are formed from their density;

for the prudent governor is like the skilled physician in preserving health and removing disease, and the disorder that befalls a kingdom resembles the aches and maladies that befall bodies.

for there is no sensation in the body, but, as not only the natural philosophers teach but also the physicians, who have seen these things laid open and exposed, there are, as it were, certain channels pierced from the seat of the soul to the eyes, the ears, the nostrils.

For as the distempers of the body are arrested by the discoveries of physicians, so savagery is expelled from the soul by the wise purposes of the legislator.

The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and externals cooperate.

And the freethinkers among the physicians came and affirmed nothing but the epilepsy of the humors ⟨.

⟩ is like the physician's denial of the jinn, since there is nothing in the craft of medicine that indicates the affirming of the jinn — and otherwise, there is nothing in ⟨.

For if we were right in what we were just saying and falsehood is in very deed useless to gods, but to men useful as a remedy or form of medicine, it is obvious that such a thing must be assigned to physicians and laymen should have nothing to do with it.

Because from physician and teacher they pass over into friends, and lay us under obligation, not by the art which they sell, but by a kindly and familiar good will.

Other wise men treat us gently and soothingly, much as the household physician, intimate with his patients, tends ailing bodies not by the best and quickest method but by what is permitted;

This is the disposition the wise man has toward all men—that of the physician toward his patients, whose private parts, if they need a remedy, he does not disdain to handle, nor to inspect their leavings and discharges, nor to take the insults of those raving in their delirium.

But what reason is there why you should not believe that this firmness of mind can fall to the wise man, when you may observe the same thing in others, though not from the same cause?

By what titles all these things are named, and by what divisions out of themselves they are held, and by what allotted stations in the body they are sequestered, the physicians will rather consider together with the philosophers;

But more, both philosophers — against Dicaearchus, Plato, Strato, Epicurus, Democritus, Empedocles, Socrates, Aristotle — and physicians against Andreas and Asclepiades, Herophilus, Erasistratus, Diocles, Hippocrates, and Soranus himself;

but whereas one deals chiefly with the organism itself, the other is concerned primarily with the surrounding material, and the analogy holds good throughout;

But in a question of health, men take the advice of physicians rather than that of their parents;

and I think, he added, that you will find that I have with me men eminent in the medical profession.

Yes, my son, but just as there are menders of torn garments, so also these physicians whom you mention heal us when we fall sick.