THE SECOND BOOK. 105 



he drowned his stomach and senses with a large draught and 

 ingurgitation of wine ; whereupon the epigram was made, 

 Hinc Stygias ebrius hausit aquas ; he was not sober enough to 

 taste any bitterness of the Stygian water. But the physicians 

 contrariwise do make a kind of scruple and religion to stay 

 with the patient after the disease is deplored ; whereas in my 

 judgment they ought both to inquire the skill, and to give the 

 attendances, for the facilitating and assuaging of the pains and 

 agonies of death. 



(8) In the consideration of the cures of diseases, I find a 

 deficience in the receipts of propriety, respecting the particular 

 cures of diseases : for the physicians have frustrated the fruit 

 of tradition and experience by their magistralities, in adding 

 and taking out and changing quid pro quo in their receipts, at 

 their pleasures ; commanding so over the medicine, as the 

 medicine cannot command over the disease. For except it be 

 treacle and mithridatum, and of late diascordium, and a few 

 more, they tie themselves to no receipts severely and reli 

 giously. For as to the confections of sale which are in the 

 shops, they are for readiness and not for propriety. For they 

 are upon general intentions of purging, opening, comforting, 

 altering, and not much appropriate to particular diseases. 

 And this is the cause why empirics and old women are more 

 happy many times in their cures than learned physicians, 

 because they are more religious in holding their medicines. 

 Therefore here is the deficience which I find, that physicians 

 have not, partly out of their own practice, partly out of the 

 constant probations reported in books, and partly out of the 

 traditions of empirics, set down and delivered over certain 

 experimental medicines for the cure of particular diseases, 

 besides their own conjectural and magistral descriptions. For 

 as they were the men of the best composition in the state of 

 Home, which either being consuls inclined to the people, or 

 being tribunes inclined to the senate ; so in the matter we 

 now handle, they be the best physicians, which being learned 

 incline to the traditions of experience, or being empirics incline 

 to the methods of learning. 



(9) In preparation of medicines I do find strange, specially 

 considering how mineral medicines have been extolled, and that 

 they are safer for the outward than inward parts, that no man 

 hath sought to make an imitation by art of natural baths and 

 medicinable fountains : which nevertheless are confessed to 

 receive their virtues from minerals ; and not so only, but 

 discerned and distinguished from what particular mineral they 

 receive tincture, as sulphur, vitriol, steel, or the like : which 



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