Having already considered all that relates to distempers in general, I come to treat of the cure of each distinctly. Now the Greeks divided them into two kinds, the one they called acute, the other chronic. And because their process was not always the same, for this reason some ranged the same distempers among the acute, which others reckoned in the number of the chronic. From whence it is plain, that there are more kinds of them. For some are short and acute, which either carry off a person quickly, or are themselves soon terminated. Others are of long continuance, from which there is neither a speedy recovery, nor speedy death. And the third kind are those, which are sometimes acute, and sometimes chronic; and this happens not only in fevers, where it is most frequent; but also in other diseases. And besides these, there is a fourth kind; which can neither be called acute, because they are not mortal; nor yet chronic, because if remedies are used, they are easily cured. When I come to treat of each, I shall point out to what kind they belong. Now I shall divide all of them into those, that seem to affect the whole body, and those, which occur in particular parts. After a few general observations upon them all, I shall begin with the first. Though there is no distemper in which fortune can pretend to more power than art, or art than nature; since medicine can do nothing in opposition to nature: yet a physician is more excusable for want of success in acute, than in chronic disorders. For in the first, there is but a small space, within which, if the remedies do not succeed, the patient dies: in the other case, there is time both for deliberation, and a change of medicines; so that very seldom, where a physician is called at its beginning, an obedient patient is lost without his fault. Nevertheless, a chronic distemper, when it is firmly rooted, becomes equally difficult with an acute one. And indeed the older an acute distemper is, so much the more easily it is cured; but a chronic one, the more recent it is. There is another thing we ought not to be ignorant of; that the same remedies don’t agree with all patients. Whence it happens, that the greatest authors extol some one remedy, some another, each recommending his own as the only one, according as they had succeeded with themselves. It is fit therefore, when any thing does not answer, not to pay so much regard to the author of it, as to the patient, and to make trial of one thing after another. _Remembering_ however, that in acute distempers, what does not relieve, must be quickly changed: in the chronic, which time both causes, and removes, whatever has not immediately done service, is not to be hastily condemned; much less must that be discontinued, which does but give a small relief, because its good effects are completed by time. CHAP. II.