ions of the principal masters and ancient authors of this science, which is only known to men well read, without discovering to the vulgar the controversies and various judgments which they still nourish and continue amongst themselves.

cians as to the

science.

Will you have one example of the ancient controversies in 1 physic? Herophilus 1 lodges the original cause The opposite sentiments of physi- of all diseases in the humours; Erasistratus, in cause of diseases, the blood of the arteries; Asclepiades, in the a proof of the uncertainty of their invisible atoms of the pores; Alcmeon, in the exuberance or defect of our bodily strength; Diocles in the equality of the elements of which the body is composed, and in the quality of the air we suck in; Strato, in the abundance, crudity, and corruption of the nourishment we take; and Hippocrates lodges them in the spirits. There is a certain friend of theirs,2 whom they know better than I, who declares upon this subject, "That the most important science in practice amongst us, as that which is intrusted with our health and conservation, is by ill luck the most uncertain, the most perplexed, and agitated with the greatest mutations." There is no great danger in being mistaken as to the height of the sun, or the fraction of some astronomical supputation; but here, where our whole being is concerned, 'tis no wisdom to abandon ourselves to the mercy of the agitation of so many contrary winds.

Physic, when and

Before the Peloponnesian war there was no great talk of 8 this science. Hippocrates brought it into reby whom brought pute; whatever he established Chrysippus overinto credit. threw; after that Erasistratus, Aristotle's grandson, overthrew what Chrysippus had written; after these, the empirics started up, who took a quite contrary way to the ancients in the management of this art. When the credit of these began to decay, Herophilus set another sort of practice on foot, which Asclepiades in turn stood up details respecting ancier taken.

1 Celsus, Preface to the First Book. 2 Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxix. 1.

3 Id. ib. xxix. whence the following

medicine are

against and overthrew. The opinion first of Themison, and then of Musa; and after that, those of Vectius Valens, a physician famous through the intelligence he had with Messalina, came in vogue; the empire of physic in Nero's time fell to Thessalus, who abolished and condemned all that had been held till his time; his doctrine was refuted by Crinas of Marseilles, who brought all medicinal operations under the . ephemerides and motions of the stars, and reduced eating, sleeping, and drinking to hours that were most pleasing to Mercury and the moon. His authority was soon after supplanted by Charinus, a physician of the same city of Marseilles; a man that not only controverted all the ancient methods of physic, but moreover the use of hot baths, that had been generally and so many ages before in common use; he made men bathe in cold water even in winter, and plunged his sick patients in the natural waters of the stream. No Roman till Pliny's time had ever vouchsafed to practise physic; that office was only performed by Greeks and foreigners, as 'tis now amongst us in French, by those that sputter Latin; for, as a great physician says, " We do not readily receive the medicine we understand, any more than we do the drugs we ourselves gather." If the nations from which we fetch our guaicum, sarsaparilla, and china root, be conversant with medicine, how great a value must we imagine, by the same recommendation of strangeness, rarity, and dear purchase, they set upon our cabbage and parsley? For who would dare to contemn things so far fetched, and at the hazard of so long and dangerous a voyage?

Since these ancient mutations in physic, there have been infinite others down to our own times; and, for the most part, such as have been entire and universal; as those, for example, produced by Paracelsus, Fioravanti, and Argenterius; for they, as I am told, not only altered recipes, but the whole contexture and rules of the body of physic, accusing all others of ignorance and imposition that practised before them. Amongst them all, in what a condition the poor patient must be, I leave you to judge.

But if we were yet assured that when they mistake themselves, that mistake of theirs would do us no harm, though it did us no good, it were a reasonable bargain to venture making ourselves better, without danger of being made worse.1 Æsop tells a story that one who had bought a Morisco slave, believing that his black complexion was accidental in him, and occasioned by the ill usage of his former master, caused him to enter into a course of physic, and with great care to be often bathed and purged; it happened that the Moor was nothing amended in his tawny complexion, but he wholly lost his former health. How often do we see physicians impute the death of their patients to one another? I remember that some years ago there was an epidemical disease, very dangerous, and for the most part mortal, that raged in the towns about us; the storm being over, which had swept away an infinite number of men, one of the most famous physicians of all the country, presently after published a book upon that subject, wherein, upon better thoughts, he confesses that the letting of blood in that disease was the principal cause of so many miscarriages. Moreover, their authors hold that there is no physic that has not something hurtful in it. And if even those of the best operation do in some measure offend us, what must those do that are totally misapplied? For my own part, though there were nothing else in the case, I am of opinion that to those that loath the taste of physic it must needs be a dangerous and prejudicial endeavour, to force it down at so incommodious a time and with so much aversion; and believe that it marvellously distempers a sick person, at a time when he has so much need of repose.

And besides this, if we but consider the occasions upon which they usually ground the cause of our diseases, they

1 Paracelsus has already been mentioned. Leonard Fioravanti was a physician, alchemist, and charlatan, born at Bologna, who, after flourishing in great repute in Italy for some time, died in 1588. Jean Argentier, a man of a higher

character, was born at Quiers in Piedmont, in 1513, and died at Turin, in 1572. He distinguished himself more especially by his attacks on Galen's prin ciples.

are so nice, that I thence conclude a very

Physicians very

takes, and their

quences.

little error in the dispensation of their drugs, subject to mismay do a great deal of mischief. Now, if pernicious consethe mistake of a physician be so dangerous, we are but in a scurvy condition; for it is almost impossible but he must often fall into those mistakes; he had need of too many parts, considerations, and circumstances, rightly to adjust his design; he must know the sick person's complexion, his temperature, his humours, inclinations, actions, nay, his very thoughts and imaginations; he must be assured of the external circumstances, of the nature of the place, the quality of the air and season, the situation of the planets, and their influences; he must know, in the disease, the causes, prognostics, affections, and critical days; in the drugs, the weight, the power of working, the country, figure, age, and dispensation; and he must know how rightly to proportion and mix all these together, to beget a just and perfect symmetry; wherein, if there be the least error, if amongst so many springs there be but any one out of order, 'tis enough to destroy us. God knows of how great difficulty most of these things are to be understood. For, for example, how shall a physician find out the true sign of the disease, every disease being capable of an infinite number of indications? How many doubts and controversies have they amongst themselves upon the interpretation of urines! Otherwise, whence should the continual debates we see amongst them about the knowledge of the disease proceed? How would we excuse the error they so often fall into, of taking one thing for another? In the maladies I have had, were there never so little difficulty in the case, I never found three of one opinion; which I instance, because I love to introduce examples wherein I am myself concerned.

A gentleman at Paris was lately cut for the stone, by order of the physicians, in whose bladder there was found no more stone than in the palm of his hand; and in the same place, a bishop, who was my particular good friend, was

earnestly pressed by the major part of the physicians he consulted, to suffer himself to be cut, to which also, upon their credit, I used my interest to persuade him; when he was dead, and opened, it appeared that he had no stone, but only a disorder in the kidneys. They are least excusable for an error in this disease, by reason that it is in some sort palpable; and 'tis by that that I take surgery to be much more certain, by reason that it sees and feels what it does, and so goes less upon conjecture; whereas the physicians have no speculum matricis, by which to discover our brains, lungs, and liver.

The promises of the physicians generally incredible.

Even the very promises of physic are incredible in themselves; for, being to provide against divers and contrary accidents, that often afflict us at one and the same time, and that have almost a necessary relation, as the heat of the liver and the coldness of the stomach, they will needs persuade us that, of their ingredients, one will heat the stomach, and the other cool the liver; one has its commission to go directly to the reins, nay, even to the bladder, without scattering its operations by the way, and is to retain its power and virtue, through all the stops and meanders, to the very place for the service of which it is designed, by its own occult property; another will dry the brain; another moisten the lungs. All these things being mixed in one potion, it is a kind of madness to imagine or hope that these differing virtues should separate themselves from one another in this mixture and confusion, to perform so many various errands; I should very much fear that they would either lose or change their tickets, and trouble one another's quarters. And who can imagine but that, in this liquid confusion, these faculties must corrupt, confound, and spoil one another? Besides that the making up of this medicine is intrusted to the skill and fidelity of another, to whose mercy we again abandon our lives?

As we have doublet and breeches makers, distinct trades, to clothe us, and are so much the better fitted, being that