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. 6. By likes, as a round bandage is put on a round wound, or an oblong one on an oblong wound. For the very bandage is not the same for all wounds, but like is fitted to like.... 7. _Antidotum_ in the Greek means in the Latin _ex contrario datum_. For contraries are cured by contraries in the medical system. On the other hand likes are cured by likes, as for example, πικρὰ which means bitters because its taste is bitter. It received a suitable name because the bitterness of disease is dispelled by its bitterness. Chapter 13. On the beginning of medicine.[290] [290] _De initio medicinae._ 1. Inquiry is made by certain why the art of medicine is not included among the liberal disciplines. Because of this, that they embrace separate subjects, but medicine embraces all. For the physician is commanded to know grammar, in order to be able to understand and set forth what he reads. 2. In like manner rhetoric, too, that he may be able to define by true arguments the diseases which he treats. Moreover logic, to scrutinize and cure the causes of infirmities by the aid of reason. So, too, arithmetic, on account of the number of hours in paroxysms and of the days in periods. 3. In the same manner geometry, on account of the qualities of districts and the situations of places, in respect to which it teaches what one ought to observe. Moreover, music will not be unknown to him, for there are many things that are read of as accomplished by this discipline in the case of sick men, as it is read of David that he saved Saul from an unclean spirit by the art of melody. The physician Asclepiades, too, restored one who was subject to frenzy to his former health by music. 4. Lastly, he will know astronomy, by which to contemplate the system of the stars and the change of the seasons, for as a certain physician says, our bodies change too, along with the qualities of the heavens. Hence it is that medicine is called “a second philosophy”. For both disciplines claim the whole man. For as by one the soul is cured, so is the body by the other. BOOK V ON LAWS[291] [291] The _De Legibus_ constitutes Isidore’s formal account of law. In bk. ii a chapter is devoted to the subject of law as a sub-division of rhetoric; it consists of definitions of general terms. In bk. ix there are chapters on citizens, and on degrees of kinship, which have a legal bearing. _Cf._ also bk. xviii, 15. INTRODUCTION