= Solution
\b[Translation.] For rapidly developing, or <acute diseases>, also resolve of their own accord, sometimes through favourable chance and sometimes through nature's favour. Consequently, ignorant people, carried away by this, often avoid <physicians> and attribute these favourable outcomes to new incantations and amulets, or to chance; for these rapidly developing <diseases> are driven out either by a flow of <sweat>, by <blood> discharged through the nose, or by a discharge from the <intestines>. But <chronic diseases>, or <diseases> of slow development, which have already gained possession of the body with a kind of prior claim, call for the skill of the <physician> alone, since they are resolved neither by nature nor by chance.
\b[Interpretation.] <Caelius Aurelianus> contrasts spontaneous resolution in <acute disease> with the entrenched course of <chronic disease>. Here \i[passiones] means affections or <diseases>, not emotions; \i[ligamenta] means protective bindings or amulets, not anatomical <ligaments>; \i[proventus] means favourable outcomes. The metaphor \i[praejudicio quodam] gives the established <disease> something like a prior claim on the body. The final assertion is the author's defence of professional <medicine>, not a present-day law that every <chronic disease> requires effective medical <treatment> or that none can remit spontaneously. The account of <sweating>, <nosebleeds> and <intestine> discharge describes his historical explanation, not evidence that deliberately producing these discharges cures <acute disease>. <Examination papers for the Degree of Bachelor of Medicine by the University of Oxford (1864–1867)>[PDF volume p. 101, Latin extract attributed to the preface to Caelius Aurelianus's chronic diseases]{ref}
Back to article page
