FIG. 6. A kylix from the Berlin Museum of about 490 B. C. It bears the inscription ΣΟΣΙΑΣ ΕΠΟΙΗΣΕΝ, _Sosias made (me)_, and represents Achilles bandaging Patroclus, the names of the two heroes being written round the margin. The painter is Euphronios, and the work is regarded as the masterpiece of that great artist. The left upper arm of Patroclus is injured, and Achilles is bandaging it with a two-rolled bandage, which he is trying to bring down to extend over the elbow. The treatment of the hands, a department in which Euphronios excelled, is particularly fine. Achilles was not a trained surgeon, and it will be observed, from the position of the two tails of the bandage, that he will have some difficulty when it comes to its final fastening! ] ‘Life is short, and the Art long; the opportunity fleeting; experiment dangerous, and judgement difficult. Yet we must be prepared not only to do our duty ourselves, but also patient, attendants, and external circumstances must co-operate.’[124] In this one memorable paragraph, so condensed in the original as to be almost untranslatable, he who ‘first separated medicine from philosophy’ puts aside at once all speculative interest while in the actual presence of the sick. His whole energy is concentrated on the case in hand with that peculiar attitude, at once impersonal and intensely personal, that has since been the mark of the physician, and that has made of Medicine both a science and an art. ‘For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure.’[125] [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. ‘The aged endure fasting most easily; next adults; next young persons, and least of all children, and especially such as are the most lively.’ ‘Growing bodies have the most innate heat; they therefore require the most nourishment, and if they have it not they waste. In the aged there is little heat, and therefore they require little fuel, for it would be extinguished by much. Similarly fevers in the aged are not so acute, because their bodies are cold.’ ‘In disease sleep that is laborious is a deadly symptom; but if sleep relieves it is not deadly.’ ‘Sleep that puts an end to delirium is a good symptom.’ ‘If a convalescent eats well, but does not put on flesh, it is a bad symptom.’ ‘Food or drink which is a little less good but more palatable, is to be preferred to such that is better but less palatable.’ ‘The old have generally fewer complaints than young; but those chronic diseases which do befall them generally never leave them.’