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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: healthy elements are to be indulged, and the bad elements and the elements
of disease are not to be indulged, but discouraged. And this is what the
physician has to do, and in this the art of medicine consists: for
medicine may be regarded generally as the knowledge of the loves and
desires of the body, and how to satisfy them or not; and the best physician
is he who is able to separate fair love from foul, or to convert one into
the other; and he who knows how to eradicate and how to implant love,
whichever is required, and can reconcile the most hostile elements in the
constitution and make them loving friends, is a skilful practitioner. Now
the most hostile are the most opposite, such as hot and cold, bitter and
sweet, moist and dry, and the like. And my ancestor, Asclepius, knowing
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