ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING in 



life, so the physician, who preserves life, seems a second origin 

 thereof. But medicine receives far greater honor from the 

 works of our Saviour, who was physician both to soul and body, 

 and made the latter the standing subject of his miracles, as the 

 soul was the constant subject of his doctrine. 



Of all the things that nature has created, the human body is 

 most capable of relief, though this relief be the most liable to 

 error. For as the subtilty and variety of the subject afford 

 many opportunities of cure, so likewise a great facility of mis- 

 take. And, therefore, as this art, especially at present, stands 

 among the most conjectural ones, so the inquiry into it is to be 

 placed among the most subtile and difficult. Neither are we 

 so senseless as to imagine, with Paracelsus and the alchemists, 

 that there are to be found in man's body definite analogies to 

 all the variety of specific natures in the world, perverting very 

 impertinently that emblem of the ancients, that man was a 

 microcosm or model of the whole world, to countenance their 

 idle fancies. Of all natural bodies, we find none so variously 

 compounded as the human : vegetables are nourished by earth 

 and water ; brutes by herbs and fruits ; but man feeds upon the 

 flesh of living creatures, herbs, grain, fruits, different juices and 

 liquors ; and these all prepared, preserved, dressed, and mixed 

 in endless variety. Besides, the way of living among other 

 creatures is more simple, and the affections that act upon the 

 body fewer and more uniform ; but man in his habitation, his 

 exercises, passions, etc., undergoes numberless changes. So 

 that it is evident that the body of man is more fermented, com- 

 pounded, and organized, than any other natural substance ; the 

 soul, on the other side, is the simplest, as is well expressed : 



" purumque reliquit 



^Ethereum sensum, atque aurai simplicis ignem;"* 



so that we need not marvel that the soul so placed enjoys no 

 rest, since it is out of its place : " Motus rerum extra locum est 

 rapidus, placidus in loco."c This variable and subtile composi- 

 tion, and fabric of the human body, makes it like a kind of curi- 

 ous musical instrument, easily disordered; and, therefore, the 

 poets justly joined music and medicine in Apollo ; because the 

 office of medicine is to tune the curious organ of the human 

 body, and reduce it to harmony. 

 The subject being so variable has rendered the art more con- 



