ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 119 



and especially since human industry can, by certain separations, 

 discover with what kind of minerals such waters are impreg- 

 nated, as whether by sulphur, vitriol, iron, etc. And if these 

 natural impregnations of waters are reducible to artificial com- 

 positions, it would then be in the power of art to make more 

 kinds of them occasionally, and at the same time to regulate 

 their temperature at pleasure. This part, therefore, of medi- 

 cine, concerning the artificial imitation of natural baths and 

 springs, we set down as deficient, and recommend as an easy 

 as well as useful undertaking. 



The last deficiency we shall mention seems to us of great 

 importance ; viz., that the methods of cure in use are too short 

 to effect anything that is difficult or very considerable. For it 

 is rather vain and flattering, than just and rational, to expect 

 that any medicine should be so effectual, or so successful, as by 

 the sole use thereof to work any great cure. It must be a 

 powerful discourse, which, though often repeated, should cor- 

 rect any deep-rooted and inveterate vice of the mind. Such 

 miracles are not to be expected ; but the things of greatest effi- 

 cacy in nature, are order, perseverance, and an artificial change 

 of applications, which, though they require exact judgment to 

 prescribe, and precise observance to follow, yet these are amply 

 recompensed by the great effects they produce. To see the 

 daily labors of physicians in their visits, consultations, and pre- 

 scriptions, one would think that they diligently pursued the 

 cure, and went directly in a certain beaten track about it ; but 

 whoever looks attentively into their prescriptions and direc- 

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

 tainty, wavering, and irresolution, without any certain view or 

 fore-knowledge of the course of the cure. Whereas, they 

 should from the first, after having fully and perfectly discovered 

 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 example, that perhaps three 

 or four remedies rightly prescribed in an inveterate disease, and 

 taken in due order, and at due distances of time, may perform 

 a cure ; and yet the same remedies taken independently of each 

 other, in an inverted order, or not at stated periods, might prove 

 absolutely prejudicial. Though we mean not, that every 

 scrupulous and superstitious method of cure should be es- 

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



