n6 BACON 



upon all the humors, and the marks and impressions of diseases 

 in different bodies upon dissection ; for the humors are com- 

 monly passed over in anatomy, as loathsome and excrementi- 

 tious things ; whereas it is highly useful and necessary to note 

 their nature and the various kinds that may sometimes be found 

 in the human body, in what cavities they principally lodge, and 

 with what advantage, disadvantage, and the like. So the marks 

 and impressions of diseases, and the changes and devastations 

 they bring upon the internal parts, are to be diligently observed 

 in different dissections; viz., imposthumes, ulcerations, solu- 

 tions of continuity, putrefactions, corrosions, consumptions, 

 contractions, extensions, convulsions, luxations, dislocations, 

 obstructions, repletions, tumors, and preternatural excres- 

 cences, as stones, carnosities, wens, worms, etc., all which 

 should be very carefully examined and orderly digested in the 

 comparative anatomy we speak of ; and the experiments of sev- 

 eral physicians be here collected and compared together. But 

 this variety of accidents, is by anatomists either slightly touched 

 or else passed over in silence. 



That defect in anatomy, owing to its not having been prac- 

 tised upon live bodies, needs not be spoken to, the thing itself 

 being odious, cruel, and justly condemned by Celsus ; * yet the 

 observation of the ancients is true, that many subtile pores, 

 passages, and perforations appear not upon dissection, because, 

 they are closed and concealed in dead bodies, that might be 

 open and manifest in live ones. Wherefore, if we would con- 

 sult the good of mankind, without being guilty of cruelty, this 

 anatomy of live creatures should be entirely deserted or left to 

 the casual inspection of chirurgeons, or may be sufficiently per- 

 formed upon living brutes, notwithstanding the dissimilitude 

 between their parts and those of men, so as to answer the design, 

 provided it be done with judgment. 



Physicians, likewise, when they inquire into diseases, find so 

 many which they judge incurable, either from their first appear- 

 ance, or after a certain period, that the proscriptions of Sylla 

 and the Triumvirate were trifling to the proscriptions of the 

 physicians, by which, with an unjust sentence, they deliver men 

 over to death ; numbers whereof, however, escape with less diffi- 

 culty than under the Roman proscriptions. A work, therefore, 

 is wanting upon the cures of reputed incurable diseases, that 

 physicians of eminence and resolution may be encouraged and 



