418 INTRODUCTORY LECTURES. 



to be restrained, in the use of reasoning. The only remedy for the 

 abuse, that we know of, is the making men better reasoners, the 

 exercising them much on the particular subjects they are to be 

 employed in, and directing their attention to every consideration 

 that may influence their determinations. A physician will some- 

 times reason in matters of law, but in doing so he gives occa- 

 sion to the lawyer to smile at his weakness, and I know that a 

 lawyer, in like manner, may be ridiculous in his turn. In this 

 case each profession will perceive the abuse in the other ; but, 

 to correct it, neither the lawyer nor the physician will think of 

 persuading his neighbour to give up reasoning in general, but 

 may very properly advise him, to give it up with regard to a 

 subject in which he has not been sufficiently exercised. But it 

 is still doubtful if the advice would be followed ; and if there 

 were any propriety in the physician's attempting to reason in law, 

 the only means of rendering it safe, would be to engage him 

 in the study of that science in its full extent. 



Now all this applies to physic, and, as I judge, very exactly. 

 Such is the general propensity I have mentioned, that I have 

 not, in all my life, known a single person belonging to the pro- 

 fession who did not, upon many occasions, use reasoning con- 

 cerning it, and what may fairly be called theory. Every prac- 

 titioner has daily proofs of the propensity and presumption of 

 his patients in this respect ; and among the practitioners them- 

 selves, though they can declare that Paracelsus was a knave, 

 that Helmont was a madman, and Des Cartes a fool, and that 

 all theory is nonsense, yet I find that they constantly employ it 

 themselves. This man is plethoric, and therefore must be blood- 

 ed; that man's stomach is foul, and he must be vomited; a third 

 man's blood is full of acrimony, and he must be purged. Every 

 body acquainted with practitioners must be familiar with rea- 

 sonings of this kind. The persons who employ them may not 

 perhaps perceive that they are using theory ; but I know that 

 they are using it, and that of a bad kind too. I have known 

 a man deemed plethoric who was only fat ; I have known a 

 stomach supposed foul, when it was only sympathetically affect- 

 ed ; and I have known an acrimony of the blood often conclud- 

 ed from what was merely a cutaneous affection. In short, so 

 far as my observation goes, there is not any one practitioner, even 



