Besides the above-mentioned faults another thing remains to be noticed about Timaeus. Having lived for nearly fifty years in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Athens&groupId=379&placeId=715">Athens</a> with access to the works of previous writers, he considered himself peculiarly qualified to write history, making herein, I think, a great mistake.
For as medicine and history have this point of resemblance, that each of them may be roughly said to consist of three parts, so there is the same difference in the dispositions those who enter on these callings.
To begin with, as there are three parts of medicine, first the theory of disease, next dietetics, and thirdly surgery and pharmaceutics [a sentence only partially legible in the MS.], the study of the theory of disease,
which is derived chiefly from the schools of Herophilus and Callimachus at <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Alexandria&groupId=1063&placeId=1868">Alexandria</a>, is indeed an integral part of medicine, but as regards the ostentation and pretensions of its professors they give themselves such an air of superiority that one would think no one else was master of the subject.
Yet when you make them confront reality by entrusting a patient to them you find them just as incapable of being of any service as those who have never read a single medical treatise. Not a few invalids indeed who had nothing serious the matter with them have before now come very near losing their lives by entrusting themselves to these physicians, impressed by their rhetorical powers.
For really they are just like pilots who steer by book. But nevertheless these men visit different towns with great parade, and when they manage to collect a crowd, throw into the greatest confusion and expose to the contempt of their audience men who in actual practice have given real proof of their skill, the persuasiveness of their eloquence often prevailing against the testimony of practical experience.
The third quality, which in every profession gives the true habit of mind, is not only rare but is often cast into the shade by gabble and audacity owing to people's general lack of judgement.
Walbank Commentary