ADVANCEMENT OF ^LEARNING 193 



went directly in a certain beaten track about it; but who 

 ever looks attentively into their prescriptions and directions, 

 will find, that the most of what they do is full of uncer 

 tainty, wavering, and irresolution, without any certain view 

 or foreknowledge of the course of the cure. Whereas they 

 should from the first, after having fully and perfectly dis 

 covered the disease, choose and resolve upon some regular 

 process or series of cure, and not depart from it without 

 sufficient reason. Thus physicians should know, for ex 

 ample, that perhaps three or four remedies rightly pre 

 scribed in an inveterate disease, and taken in due order, 

 and at due distances of time, may perform a, &amp;lt;jure ; and yet 

 the same remedies taken independently of each other, in an 

 inverted order, or not at stated periods, might prove abso 

 lutely prejudicial. Though we mean not, that every scru 

 pulous and superstitious method of cure should be esteemed 

 the best, but that the way should be as exact as it is con 

 fined and difficult. And this part of medicine we note as 

 deficient, under the name of the physicians clew or direc 

 tory. And these are the things wanting in the doctrine of 

 medicine, for the cure of diseases; but there still remains 

 one thing more, and of greater use than all the rest; viz., 

 a genuine and active natural philosophy, whereon to build 

 the science of physic. 



We make the third part of medicine regard the prolon 

 gation of life: this is a new part, and deficient, though the 

 most noble of all; for if it may be supplied, medicine will 

 not then be wholly versed in sordid cures, nor physicians be 

 honored only for necessity, but as dispensers of the greatest 

 earthly happiness that could well be conferred on mortals ; 

 for though the world be but as a wilderness to a Christian 

 travelling through it to the promised land, yet it would be 

 an instance of the divine favor, that our clothing, that is, 

 our bodies, should be little worn while we sojourn here. 

 And as this is a capital part of physic, and as we note it for 

 deficient, we shall lay down some directions about it. 



And first, no writer extant upon this subject has made 



SCIENCE Yol. 219 



