32 Dr. Fordycl’s Lefture 
are left to be drawn afunder by their elafticity, weight, or the 
weight of the furrounding parts, or any other accidental 
power : but, neverthelefs, there are applications which may 
be made to diftant parts of the body, which may, and do, 
take off the attraction which occafions the aCtion of the mov- 
ing part ; and all thofe reafonings which I have already applied 
to applications which excite aCtion, and which are called fti- 
muli, are equally applicable to thofe applications which make 
aCtion ceafe, and which we call fedatives. 
The great ground on which I have attempted to make thefe 
obfervations, is the foundation of certain maxims in the prac- 
tice of medecine, which I fhali now proceed to fketcli out to 
the Society, whofe institution, to me, has always feemed to 
include the philofophy, but not the aCtual practice, of medi- 
cine. 
Medicine is a fcience of long cultivation in that chan- 
nel in which all the fciences have flowed, and had early 
attained great perfection, I believe, from the teftimony of 
various writers of antiquity, and other circumftances, which 
I pafs over as well known to many of this learned body, 
and too foreign a digreflion from our prefent fubjeCt : for 
although Cels us obferves well, that there could be no 
phyficians among the Greeks at the time of the Trojan 
war, inafmuch as Homer never mentions one medicine, but 
only application to the Gods for the cure of fevers, and other 
internal difeafes ; yet the Egyptians, from whom the Greeks 
received a great part of their knowledge in all fcience, as well 
as in medicine, had certainly not only regular phyficians 
for internal difeafes, but likewife ftone-cutters, oculifts, au- 
rifts, &c. long before the Trojan war ; and Hippocrates, 
by his own teftimony, took much of his knowledge from 
what he calls the ancients. In the progrefs, therefore, of the 
fcience 
