4. So too in man’s head the air passages[286] and the veins produce a windiness from the resolving of moisture[287] and make a whirling in his eyes whence vertigo is named.
5. Epilepsy took its name because while seizing the mind it also holds the body. For the Greeks call seizure ἐπιληψία. And it comes from the melancholy humor whenever it becomes abundant and has turned toward the head. This disorder is also called caduca (the falling sickness), because the sick man falls and suffers from spasms.
6. The common herd call these also lunatici because their madness[288] comes upon them according to the course of the moon....
Chapter 8. On diseases that appear on the surface of the body.
11. Leprosy is a scaly roughness of the skin, like lepidus (pepper-wort), whence it took its name, and its color now turns to black, now to white, now to red. On the body of a man leprosy is diagnosed in this way, if a varied color appears here and there between sound parts of the skin, or if it spreads everywhere in such a way as to make all of one unnatural color.
12. The morbus elephantiacus[289] is so called from the resemblance to an elephant, whose naturally hard and rough skin gave the name to the disease among men, because it makes the surface of the body like the hide of an elephant; or it may be because it is a great disorder, like the animal itself from which it has derived its name.
Chapter 9. On remedies and medicines.
1. The curative power of medicine must not be despised. For we remember that Isaiah sent something of medicinal nature to Hezekiah when he was sick, and Paul the apostle said a little wine was good for Timothy.
3. There are three kinds of cures in all. The first is the dietetic; the second, the pharmaceutical; the third, the surgical. Diet (diaeta) is the observance of the law of life. Pharmacy is curing by medicines. Surgery is cutting with the knife; for with the knife is cut away that which does not feel the healing of medicines....
5. Every cure is wrought either by contraries or by likes. By contraries, as cold by warm and dry by moist, just as in man pride cannot be cured except by humility.