1 1 2 The Advancement of Learning 



the way to reduce them to a few simple letters. So that it 

 is not the insufficiency or incapacity of man's mind, but it is 

 the remote standing or placing thereof, that breedeth these 

 mazes and incomprehensions: for as the sense afar off is 

 full of mistaking, but is exact at hand, so is it of the 

 understanding; the remedy whereof is, not to quicken or 

 strengthen the organ, but to go nearer to the object; and 

 therefore there is no doubt but if the physicians will learn 

 and use the true approaches and avenues of nature, they 

 may assume as much as the poet saith : 



Et quoniam variant morbi, variabimus artes; 

 Mille mali species, mille salutis erunt.* 



Which that they should do, the nobleness of their art doth 

 deserve; well shadowed by the poets, in that they made 

 ^sculapius to be the son of the sun, the one being the 

 fountain of life, the other as the second stream: but 

 infinitely more honoured by the example of our Saviour, 

 who made the body of man the object of His miracles, as 

 the soul was the object of His doctrine. For we read not 

 that ever He vouchsafed to do any miracle about honour or 

 money, except that one for giving tribute to Caesar; ^ but 

 only about the preserving, sustaining, and healing the body 

 of man. 



3. Medicine is a science which hath been, as we said, more 

 professed than laboured, and yet more laboured than 

 advanced; the labour having been, in my judgment, rather 

 in circle than in progression. For I find much iteration, 

 but small addition. It considereth causes of diseases, with 

 the occasions or impulsions ; the diseases themselves, with 

 the accidents ; and the cures, with the preservations. The 

 deficiencies which I think good to note, being a few of many, 

 and those such as are of a more open and manifest nature, 

 I will enumerate, and not place. 



4. The first is the discontinuance of the ancient and serious 

 dihgence of Hippocrates.^ which used to set down a narra- 

 tive of the special cases of his patients, and how they pro- 

 ceeded, and how they were judged by recovery or death. 

 Therefore having an example proper in the father of the art, 

 1 shall not need to allege an example foreign, of the wisdom 



» Ovid, Bern. Am. 525. « Matt. xvii. 27. 



• Hippocr, De Epidcmiis. 



