X. 8.] THE SECOND BOOK. 14! 



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 phy 

 sicians, 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 Rome, 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 i m i ta tio 

 have been extolled, and that they are safer nature in 

 for the outward than inward parts, that no balneis, et 

 man hath sought to make an imitation by art a&amp;lt; ? uis medi ~ 

 of natural baths and medicinable fountains : 

 which nevertheless are confessed to receive their virtues 

 from minerals : and not so only, but discerned and dis 

 tinguished from what particular mineral they receive tinc 

 ture, as sulphur, vitriol, steel, or the like : which nature, 

 if it may be reduced to compositions of art, both the 

 variety of them will be increased, and the temper of them 

 will be more commanded. 



