.

Book II. tyrannical Authority Phyficians ufurp over poor Creatures, weakened and dejected by Sickness and Fear; for he tells us, That a fick Perfon, being afked by his Phyfician, • what Operation he found of the Medicines he had given • him? I have fweat very much, fays the fick Man:' • That's good, fays the Phyfician: Another Time, having afked him, How he felt himself after his Phyfic?' I • have been very cold, and have had a great Shivering upon me, faid be: That's good, replied the Phyfician: After the third Dofe, he asked him again, How he did?' Why, I find myself fwelled, and puffed up, faid he, as if I had a Dropfy:' Better ftill, faid the Phyfician : One of his Servants coming, presently after, to inquire • how he felt himself?' Truly, Friend, faid he, with ⚫ being too well, I am about to die.'

There was a more just Law in Egypt, by which the Physician, for the three first Days, was to take Charge of his Patient, at the Patient's own Peril and Fortune: But those three Days being paffed, it was to be at his For why should their Patron Æfculapius be ftruck with Thunder for restoring Hypolitus from Death to Life,

own.

Nam Pater Omnipotens aliquem indignatus ab umbris
Mortalem infernis ad lumina furgere vitæ,

Ipfe repertorem medicine talis et artis

Fulmine Phabigenam Stygias detrufit at undas".

i. e.

For Jupiter, offended at the Sight

Of one who had been dead, reftor'd to Light;
He ftruck the Man, who did it undertake,
With his fork'd Lightning to the Stygian Lake.

and his Followers he pardoned, who fend fo many Men from Life to Death? A Phyfician, boasting to Nicocles", • That his Art was of great Authority: It is fo, indeed, • faid

• Æneid. lib. vii. v. 769, &c.

In p. 652. c. 146. of the Collection of the Monks, juft mentioned, printed at the End of Stobaus, Barbeyrac thinks, that this Nicocles, who here banters a certain Quack, is the famous King of Salamina, to whom Socrates addreffed one of his Orations.

• faid Nicocles, that can, with Impunity, kill so many People.'

Mystery very neceffary for

As to what remains, had I been of their Counsel, I would have rendered my Discipline more facred and mysterious; they had begun well, but they have not ended fo. It was a good Phyfic. Beginning to make Gods and Dæmons the Authors of their Science, and to have used a peculiar Way of Speaking and Writing, though Philofophy concludes it Folly to perfuade a Man to his own good by an unintelligible way: Ut fi quis medicus imperet ut fumat terrigenam, berbigradam, domiportam, fanguine caffam": As if a Physician fhould order his Patient to take Snails *.'

It was a good Rule in their Art, and that accompa- . nies all other vain, fantastic, and fupernatural Why the PaArts, That the Patients Belief fhould pre- tient should conpoffefs them with good Hope and Affurance fide in his Phy of the Effect of their Operation.' A Rule fician.

they hold to fuch a Degree, as to maintain, that the most inexpert and ignorant Physician is more proper for a Patient that has Confidence in him, than the most learned and experienced, whom he is not acquainted with. Nay, even the Choice of moft of their Drugs, is, in fome fort, mysterious and divine. The left Fraud used in Foot of a Tortoife, the Urine of a Lizard, the Choice and the Dung of an Elephant, the Liver of a Application of Mole, Blood drawn from under the Wing of Drugs. a white Pigeon; and for us who have the Stone (so scornfully they use us in our Miseries) the Excrement of Rats beaten to Powder, and fuch-like Fooleries, as rather carry a Face of magical Enchantment, than of any folid Science, I omit the odd Number of their Pills, the Appointment of certain Days and Feafts of the Year, the Superftition of gathering their Simples at certain Hours; and that auftere wife Look, and grim Gesture, which Pliny himself fo much derides.

But they have, as I faid, failed, in that they have not added, to this fine Beginning, the making their Meetings

w Cic. de Divin. lib. ii.

and

Defcribing it by the Epithets of an Animal trailing with its Slime over the Herbage, without Blood or Bones, and carrying its House upon its Back.

The Phyficians blamed for baving renounced

the Mysterious in their Practice.

Book II and Confultations more religious and fecret, where no profane Perfon ought to have been admitted, no more than to the fecret Ceremonies of Æfculapius: For, by reason of this, it falls out, that, their Irrefolution, the Weakness of their Arguments, Divination, and Foundations, the Sharpness of their Difputes, full of Hatred, Jealousy, and Self-Intereft, coming to be discovered by every one, a Man must be very blind, not to difcern that he runs a very great Hazard in their Hands. Who ever faw one Physician approve of another's Prescription, without taking fomething away, or adding fomething to it? By which they fufficiently betray their Art, and make it manifeft to us, that they therein more confider their own Reputation, and confequently their Profit, than their Patients Intereft. He was a much wifer Man, of their Tribe, who, of old, gave it for a Rule, That only one Phyfician fhould undertake a fick Perfon;' for, if he do nothing to Purpose, one fingle Man's Fault can bring no great Scandal upon the Profeffion; and, on the contrary, the Glory will be great, if he happen to have good Succefs; whereas, when they are many, they, at every Turn, bring a Difrepute upon their Calling, forafmuch as they oftener do Hurt than Good. They ought to be satisfied with the perpetual Difagreement which is found in the Opinions of the principal Masters, and ancient Authors of this Science, which is only known to Men well read, without discovering to the Vulgar the Controverfies and various Judgments which they nourish and continue a、 mongst themselves.

The oppofite
Sentiments of
Phyficians, as
to the Caufe of
Difeafes, a
Proof of the
Uncertainty of

Shall we have one Example of the ancient Controver fy in Phyfic? Hierophilus lodges the original Cause of Diseases in the Humours; Erafiftratus, in the Blood of the Arteries; Afclepiades, in the invifible Atoms gliding in our Pores Alcmeon, in the Exuberancy, or Defect of our bodily Strength; Diocles, in the Inequality of the Elements of which the Body is com, pofed, and in the Quality of the Air we fuck in; Strato,

their Science.

y Plin. Nat. Hift. lib. xxix. c. i. z Celfus, in his Preface to lib. i,

;

in

in the Abundance, Crudity, and Corruption of the Nourishment we take ;' and Hippocrates lodges it in the Spirits. There is a certain Friend of theirs, whom they know better than I, who declares, upon this Subject, That the moft important Science in Practice, amongst us, viz. That which is intrufted with our Health and Prefervation, is, by ill Luck, the most uncertain, the most perplexed, and the most changeable. There is no great Danger in miftaking the Height of the Sun, or in the Fraction of fome aftronomical Computation: 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.

Phyfic, when, and by whom brought into

Credit.

Before the Peloponnesian War, there was no great Talk of this Science: Hippocrates brought it into Repute; and whatever he established, Chryfippus overthrew; after that, Erafiftratus, Ariftotle's Grandfon, overthrew what Chryfippus had writ of it. After thefe, the Empirics ftarted up, who took a quite contrary Method to the Ancients, in the Management of this Art: When the Credit of these began a little to decay, Herophilus fet another Sort of Practice on Foot, which Afclepiades, in turn, ftood up against, and overthrew The Opinion, first, of Themifon, and then of Mufa, and, after that, those of Vexius Valens, a Physician famous through the Intelligence he had with Meffalina, came in Vogue: The Empire of Phyfic, in Nero's Time, fell to Theffalus, who abolished and condemned all that had been held of it till his Time: This Man's Doctrine was refuted by Crinas of Marseilles, who firft brought all Medicinal ` Operations by the Ephemerides and Motions of the Stars, and reduced Eating, Sleeping, and Drinking, to Hours that were most pleafing to Mercury and the Moon: His Authority was foon after fupplanted by Charinus, a Phyfician of the fame City of Marfeilles; a Man that not only controverted all the ancient Practice of Physic, but moreover the Ufe of hot public Baths, that had been, for fo many Ages before, in common Ufe: He made Men bathe in cold Water, even in Winter, and plunged his fick Patients

* Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. xxix. c. I.

Idem, ibid.

Book II. Patients in the natural Waters of Brooks. No Roman, till Pliny's Time, had ever vouchfafed to practise Phyfic; that Office was only performed by Greeks and Foreigners, as 'tis now amongst us French, by thofe that chop Latin: • For, as a very great Phyfician fays, we do not easily receive the Medicine we understand, no more than we do the Drugs we ourselves gather.' If the Nations from whence we fetch our Guaiacum, Sarfaparilla, and China Wood, have any Physicians, how great a Value, must we imagine, by the fame Recommendation of Strangeness, Rarity, and dear Purchase, do they fet upon our Cabbage and Parfly? For, who would dare to contemn Things fo far fetched, at the Hazard of fo tedious and dangerous a Voyage?

Since these ancient Alterations in Phyfic, there have been infinite others down to our own Times, and, for the most part, fuch as have been intire and universal ; as thofe, for Example, produced, in our own Time, by Paraceljus, Fioravanti, and Argenterius; for they, as I am told, do not only alter one Receipt, but the whole Contexture and Syftem of the Body of Phyfic, accufing all others of Ignorance and Impofition that have practised before them: At this rate, in what a Condition the poor Patient must be, I leave you to judge.

If we were even affured, that, when they are mistaken, that Mistake of theirs does us no Harm, tho' it does us no Good, it were a reasonable Bargain to run the Venture of our being made better, without the Danger of being worse. Afop tells a Story, That one who had

That fuppofing
Phyfic to do
no Good, 'tis
not certain that

it does no
Harm.

A Moor bath

ed and purged to clear his

bought a Morifco Slave, believing that his black Complexion was accidental in him, and occafioned by the ill Usage of his former Master, caufed him to enter into a Course of Phy'fic, and with great Care to be often Bathed ⚫ and Drenched: It happened, that the Moor was nothing amended in his tawny Complexion, but he wholly loft his former Health.' How oft do we fee Phyficians impute the Death of their Patients to one another?

Complexion.

• Fab. lxxv.