Medicine is the sixth of the seven mechanical arts in Book II of the Didascalicon, Hugh of St Victor’s twelfth-century guide to the order of learning. Hugh treats it by the division he names here, “occasions” and “operations”. This chapter is the page’s starting definition, and the readings that follow are set beside it.
Read in contextMedicine is divided into two parts, occasions and operations. The occasions are six: air, motion and rest, emptying and filling, food and drink, sleep and waking, and the accidents of the soul. They are called occasions because they make and preserve health if they are tempered, and sickness if untempered. The accidents of the soul are called an occasion of health or sickness because they sometimes move the heat violently, as anger, or gently, as delights, or draw it in and hide it; and this either violently, as terror and fear, or gently, as anguish. And there are those which move the natural power within and without, as sadness. Every operation of medicine is done either within or without. Within, as those things that are introduced by mouth, nostrils, ears or anus, as potions, emetics, powders, clysters, etc., which are taken by drinking, chewing, or drawing in.
Without, as fomentations, poultices, plasters.
Surgery, which is twofold: in flesh, as to cut, to sew, to burn; in bone, as to knit and to restore the joints.