Now a physician should above all things know, what are incurable, what difficult to cure, and what more easy. For it is the part of a prudent man first, not to undertake one, whose case is desperate, lest he appear to have killed him, whom his own destiny has destroyed. Next, in a case of great danger, but not quite desperate, to discover to the friends of the patient, that it is a matter of difficulty: that if the malady should prevail against the art, he may neither seem to have been ignorant himself, nor to have deceived them. But as this is the proper conduct for a prudent person, so on the contrary it is the part of a quack to exaggerate a small matter, that he may appear to have performed the greater cure. Where a case is easy, it is reasonable that the physician by a free declaration of its easiness be obliged to the greater diligence and circumspection; that what is in itself small may not by his negligence become more considerable. [Sidenote: _Incurable wounds._] A person cannot be preserved, when the basis of the brain, or the heart, or the gullet, or the portæ of the liver, or the spinal marrow is wounded; or when the middle of the lungs, or the jejunum, or smaller intestine, or stomach, or kidneys are wounded; or when the large veins or arteries about the throat are cut through. [Sidenote: _Wounds difficult to cure._] The cure is difficult in such as are wounded either in any part of the lungs, or the thick part of the liver, or the membrane that contains the brain, or in the spleen, or womb, or bladder, or any intestine, or the diaphragm. Such also are in a very dangerous situation, in whom the point of a weapon has penetrated as far as the large blood vessels, that lie deep in the arm-pits and hams. And all wounds are dangerous, wherever there are large blood-vessels, because they may exhaust a person by the profusion of blood. And this happens not only in the arm-pits and hams, but likewise in the veins, which go to the anus and testicles. Besides these, any wound in the arm-pits, or the inside of the thighs, or in any cavity, or between the fingers(15)is bad. Also by which a muscle, or nerve, or artery, or membrane, or bone, or cartilage, is hurt. [Sidenote: _Safe wounds._] A wound in the flesh is safest of all, and these again from their situation are either worse or better. But a wound when large is dangerous from its size. [Sidenote: _The nature and figure of wounds._]