[123] This famous manuscript is known as Laurentian, Plutarch 74, 7, and its figures have been reproduced by H. Schöne, Apollonius von Kitium, Leipzig, 1896.
[124] The first lines are the source of the famous lines in Goethe’s Faust:
‘Ach Gott! die Kunst ist lang Und kurz ist unser Leben, Mir wird bei meinem kritischen Bestreben Doch oft um Kopf und Busen bang.’
[125] The extreme of treatment refers in the original to the extreme restriction of diet, ἐς ἀκριβείην, but the meaning of the Aphorism has always been taken as more generalized.
[126] The ancients knew almost nothing of infection as applied specifically to disease. All early peoples—including Greeks and Romans—believed in the transmission of qualities from object to object. Thus purity and impurity and good and bad luck were infections, and diseases were held to be infections in that sense. But there is little evidence in the belief of the special infectivity of disease as such in antiquity. Some few diseases are, however, unequivocally referred to as infectious in a limited number of passages, e. g. ophthalmia, scabies, and phthisis in the περὶ διαφορᾶς πυρετῶν, On the differentiae of fevers, K. vii, p. 279. The references to infection in antiquity are detailed by C. and D. Singer, ‘The scientific position of Girolamo Fracastoro’, Annals of Medical History, vol. i, New York, 1917.
[127] K. F. H. Marx, Herophilus, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Medizin, Karlsruhe, 1838.
[128] Galen, περὶ ἀνατομικῶν ἐγχειρήσεων, On anatomical preparations, ix. 5 (last sentence).
[129] Galen, περὶ φλεβῶν καὶ ἀρτηριων ανατομῆς, On the anatomy of veins and arteries, i.
[130] The quotation is from chapter xxxiii, line 44 of the Anonymus Londinensis. H. Diels, Anonymus Londinensis in the Supplementum Aristotelicum, vol. iii, pars 1, Berlin, 1893.
[131] Sanctorio Santorio, Oratio in archilyceo patavino anno 1612 habita; de medicina statica aphorismi. Venice, 1614.