This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content. 1. Those who composed what are called "The Cnidian Sentences" have described accurately what symptoms the sick experience in every disease, and how certain of them terminate; and in so far a man, even who is not a physician, might describe them correctly, provided he put the proper inquiries to the sick themselves what their complaints are. But those symptoms which the physician ought to know beforehand without being informed of them by the patient, are, for the most part, omitted, some in one case and some in others, and certain symptoms of vital importance for a conjectural judgment. But when, in addition to the diagnosis, they describe how each complaint should be treated, in these cases I entertain a still greater difference of opinion with them respecting the rules they have laid down; and not only do I not agree with them on this account, but also because the remedies they use are few in number; for, with the exception of acute diseases, the only medicines which they give are drastic purgatives, with whey, and milk at certain times. If, indeed, these remedies had been good and suitable to the complaints in which they are recommended, they would have been still more deserving of recommendation, if, while few in number, they were sufficient; but this is by no means the case. Those, indeed, who have remodeled these "Sentences" have treated of the remedies applicable in each complaint more in a medical fashion. But neither have the ancients written anything worth regimen, although this be a great omission. Some of them, indeed, were not ignorant of the many varieties of each complaint, and their manifold divisions, but when they wish to tell clearly the numbers (species?) of each disease they do not write for their species would be almost innumerable if every symptom experienced by the patients were held to constitute a disease, and receive a different name. 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 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.