X. (1) The knowledge that concerneth man's body is divided as the
good of man's body is divided, unto which it referreth. The good of
man's body is of four kinds--health, beauty, strength, and pleasure:
so the knowledges are medicine, or art of cure; art of decoration,
which is called cosmetic; art of activity, which is called athletic;
and art voluptuary, which Tacitus truly calleth eruditus luxus.
This subject of man's body is, of all other things in nature, most
susceptible of remedy; but then that remedy is most susceptible of
error; for the same subtlety of the subject doth cause large
possibility and easy failing, and therefore the inquiry ought to be
the more exact.
(2) To speak, therefore, of medicine, and to resume that we have
said, ascending a little higher: the ancient opinion that man was
microcosmus--an abstract or model of the world--hath been
fantastically strained by Paracelsus and the alchemists, as if there
were to be found in man's body certain correspondences and
parallels, which should have respect to all varieties of things, as
stars, planets, minerals, which are extant in the great world.
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