124 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OP LEARNING 



upon 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 judgement they ought both to inquire 

 the skill, and to give the attendances, for the facili 

 tating 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 pro- 

 Medtdnae priety, respecting the particular cures of 

 meniaies. diseases : for the physicians have frus 

 trated the fruit of tradition and ex 

 perience 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 miihridatum, and of late 

 diascordium, and a few more, they tie themselves to 

 no receipts severely and religiously. 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 defi 

 cience 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 



