166 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [bOOK IVc 



most of wliat they do is full of uncertainty, wavering, and 

 irresolution, without any certain view or fore-knowledge or 

 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 ol cure, and 

 not depai-t irom it without sufficient reason. Thus physicians 

 should know, for example, that perhaps three or lour reme- 

 dies 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, miglit 

 prove absolutely prejudicial. Though we mean not, that 

 every scrupulous and superstitious method of cure should be 

 esteemed the best, but that the way should be as exact as it 

 is confined and difficult. And this part of medicine we note 

 as deficient, under the name of the physicians' clue or direc- 

 tory. And these are the things wanting in the doctrine of 

 medicine, for the cure of diseases ; but there still remains one 

 thing more, and of greater use than all the rest; viz., a 

 genuine and active natural philosophy, whereon to build the 

 science of physic. 



We make the third part of medicine regard the pro- 

 longation of life : this is a new part, and deficient, though 

 the most noble of all ; for if it may be supplied, medicine 

 will not then be wholly versed in sordid cures, nor physicians 

 be honoured only for necessity, but as dispensers of the 

 greatest earthly happiness that could well be conferred on 

 mortals ; for though the world be but as a wilderness to a 

 Christian travelling through it to the j)roniisnd land, yet it 

 would be an instance of the divine favour, tha*: our clothing, 

 that is, our bodies, should be little worn whi>.' we sojourn 

 liere. And as this is a capital part of physic, and as we 

 note it for deficient, we shall lay down some directions 

 about it. 



And first, no writer extant upon this subject has made any 

 great or useful discovery therein. Aristotle,"' indeed, has left 

 us a ehort memoir, wherein there are some admonitions after 

 his manner, which he supposes to be all that can be said of 

 the matter; but the moderns have here written so weakly and 



•" Dt Longitudine et Novitftte Vitao, 



