scoff at them how he pleases What if their Predecessors had some power to curb the Insolences of those that contended with ' em I am well satisfied that their strength is gone they are now come to a Decrepit Old Age and doth intolerably Phil. 'T will be well for you if you find them such dull Hocuses when you come to try the point together You would do well to read a Book lately printed called The Royal College of Physicians of London founded and establish'd by Law as appears by Letters Patents Acts of Parliament adjudged Cases c. Collected by one of their worthy Collegue's Dr G. You will find likewise in the same Book An Historical account of the College's Proceedings against Empiricks and Vnlicensed Practisers in every Prince's Reign from their first Incorporation to the Murther of the Royal Martyr King Charles the First This Book does plainly prove that they have exercised very great Power both by way of Fine and Imprisonment without Bail or Manprize and by divers Overthrows at Law and the Learned in the Law who can best judge of those matters do positively affirm that they have the same power still Mom. Let the Lawyers say what they will and the Confederates write what they will in spight of all they can do I will think and say and also write what I will Moreover he that is so far debauch'd in his Senses as to be admitted into any Conclave of Physicians doth ipso facto as much entitle himself to all their Man-slaughters Fourbs and Impostures as he that is listed among a Troop of Neapolitan Banditi doth at that moment participate in the guilt of all their former Crimes and Villanies in the same manner as if he had been a part in them himself Preface Phil. So that by your way of Arguing the Communion of Saints ought to be expunged out of your Creed as well as a Combination of Banditi It seems a man ought not to unite with any society of Christians for fear he should be thereby infected with the Guilt of every particular Pretender to that Communion Henceforth let no man bind his Son Prentice to a Trade lest ipso facto he make him go snacks in all the Lies and Cheats of every individual Knave that in turning the penny Let all Societies and Corporations be dissolved by your Magisterial Quo Warranto because they so nearly resemble these Conclaves of Physicians Let no man marry a Wife lest himself be guilty of Adultery every time the slippery Associate takes a frisk abroad to see a Friend And is that the reason why some men do divorce themselves à mensâ thoro even from Virtuous Women and upon second thoughts do become Melancholick Celibates after God had joined them together I have heard it often affirmed to the honour of the Married State that the Conversation of Women in a lawful way does wonderfully sweeten and civilize the manners of men and that they are Helps very meet for us upon many accounts But I shall grant that Marriage cannot make the Aethiopian change his Skin nor the Leopard his Spots He that is born an Vnsociable Creature in whom Sowreness and Austerity are radically implanted and who by the abuses of Chymistry has turned all his Animal Spirits into keen and corrosive insomuch that he can think of nothing but what is sowre and grateing to ingenious ears it must not be expected that the State of Matrimony should tranform him into a Lamb or make him mealy-mouth'd But again let us consider He that is so far debauch'd in his Senses as to be admitted into any Conclave of Physicians c. It is a strain of that rapture and extravagance that certainly you must have been in some Trance when you penn'd it It is so shamefully silly as well as malicious to the highest degree and every body that reads must needs so see through it that I am almost ashamed to repeat a piece of such gross weakness wherein you have taken such timely care to expose your self to the Censure and Scorn of all men Have you always had so implacable a hatred unto and extravagant opinion of all Conclaves of Physicians Mom. No. Time was when I though well enough of some of them and particularly the Conclave of Physicians at London It was at a time when I had no small hopes of getting an Honourable Admittance among them and in order to it did use frequently to meet Doctor A.B.C. near the Plot-Office since so called in Aldersgate-street About the same time I writ an excellent and popular Treatise called The Disease of London or a New Discovery of the Scurvey Printed Anno 1675. Phil. By the good token that you spoke well of people once in your life Pray let 's hear a little of the Harangue you then made in favour of the College and the Leanred Members of it Mom. The Preface to that work begins thus It is observable that the First solid Foundation of Physick was laid by the great Architect of that Art Hippocates in an Isle called Coos and it is no less remarkable that the truest Superstructure was made on it in this Island by the Famed College of Physicians of London It was a Member of that Society Doctor William Harvey of Immortal Memory that had laid another Basis by detecting the Circulation of the Blood for which this Britain may as justly merit the Title of Divine as the other Coos The Rubbish that was cast about it by Parisanus Leighnerus and others to obscure it tended to render it more firm notwithstanding this was so smoothly removed by that Incomparable Physician Sir George Ent the now President of the College in his Apology that all Vniversities did then adjudge those void of Apprehension that did not readily imbrace that Principle and that it was impossible for any man to arrive to be a Physician without the knowledge of it A little after in the same Preface I did call the whole Body an Apollinean Society and a Society whose fame is spread as far as the Art of Physick it self Nay and giving an account of the Practice of Physick I did declare that the Fellows of the College have proved so wonderfully successful in it that their Methods of Curing the most stubborn of Diseases may serve for a fit Pattern to all the World to practise by and I cannot deny but in many Cases it hath proved so to me which to acknowledge is the sole occasion of my introducing this Discourse Phil. And can you read the acknowledgment of so great a Truth without blushing and confusion A Truth hich Foreigners do universally own and you could not choose but find it so in your Travells but yet as true as it is they are too modest and ingenuous arrogantly to proclaim their Methods of Curing for Patterns to all the World You cannot but know that we have greater plenty of stubborn Diseases than those Hotter Countries have though which you travelled Nay the same
untoward and stubborn Disease shall be more stubborn with us than it is with them a Clyster and a purge and a Bleeding or two will not do in this stubborn Countrey Our Physicians do find they have a great deal more to think of or else they would never have proved so wonderfully successful as you say they are and there is no doubt of the truth of it in the Practice of Physick Therefore he is not debauch'd very far in his Senses who speaks true sence in the opinion of sober men and who forbears not to give to Deserving men their due but that man's debauch'd beyond hopes of recovery who is gone so far that he has lost all common Sense lost the Memory of the principal things he writ of even the sole occasion of so late a Discourse in acknowledgment o the just worth of the Learned Fellows of the College whose Methods of Curing may serve for a fit Pattern to all the World to practise by This is not an ordinary debauch of the Mind for a Physician of your Education to rail like a Madman at all Societies and even of Physicians with a most bloody ipso facto worse than any Anathema If Malice and ill Nature had not only overclowded but extinguish'd your Reason if the Senses of your Mind were not absolutely besotted or infatuated you could not but have known who is the most likely to be debauch'd in his Senses either he that easily submits himself to the Laws and Statutes of his Countrey and lives in a due subjection to the Government under which he is born and bred or else he that would break and confound all order overturn and dissolve by his good will all Societies in the World and who would rather be a solitary Wild Beast range all alone like a declared Enemy to Mankind than be any ways Sociable though it be in the Conyersation of most Learned and Admitale men Mom. Pish That Treatise was written ten Years ago and though it had the advantage of bearing my Name before it yet I must tell you it was not written by me It was a different Hand and different Person that writ it For they say that Physicians do generally hold that once in every seven Years our Bodies are quite changed from what they were Our Gizzards are wholly new and there is a total supply of new Matter though under the same Form And further that Arch-Philosopher Aristotle is so extreamly of the foresaid opinion that he positively maintains a man can't go twice the same man into the same River Now I have very good reason to think that Mores animi sequuntur Temperamentum corporis and therefore the Body of that Hand which writ that Treatise of the Scurvey might be of another-guess Frame and Temperament than this which writ the Conclave of Physicians and so the Mind might then be more inclined to write Panegyricks of Worthy men than to expose them to the lash of Satyrical Reflections Does not a Sun-shiny day also strangely influence the Mind and make it brisk and frollicksome kind and debonaire when the effects of a Clowdy Season are quite the contary so that you see there might be very many and very good reasons both for the one and for the other Phil. Indeed I should hardly have thought you so great a Changeling as you learnedly bespeak your self If the Weather-Cock of your Brain does so depend upon the Wind and Weather according as the Physick-Season is fair or foul with you I fear we must never expect more of those Sun-shiny Books these last of the Cloudy and Malevolent sort being now so natural to you You are too old to change to the better and are so exceeding bad that you cannot possible change to the worse Momus Whatever you may therefore think of my future Constancy in the same tenour of ill will to the Faculty I do find some considerable alteration in my Dyscrasy since the first Edition of my last Book For whereas other Authors do reprint their books with some Additions I have published the second Edition of mine with many Alterations Phil. That 's pretty That you should spy such Faults worthy to be Altered in the Brat of your own Brain But I would fain hear a little more of the Preface of that Scurvey-Author adjourning one minute our further Entertainment by the Conclave-Author Momus For many Ages the World was ignorant whence the superfluous moisture proceeded which we hourly spit out until the out-let viz. the Ductus Salivales were discovered by the Learned Doctor Wharton a Fellow of the College and though it was generally believed nothing could be further declared touching the Structure of the Liver yet so elegant a description of its most intime Parts and Dissemination of its Vessels Cholidochus and a very exact pursuit of the Lymphaeducts was made by the most accomplish'd Doctor Glisson the late Prefident in his Anatomi-Hepatis that in a manner it appearaed as if nothing had been solidly written of it by any before him ibid. Phil. Now give us a cast of the Conclave-Autor's opinion concerning the College's Ignorance in Anatomy and his own superlavtive Proficiency in it Momus That is not fair you unseasonably interrupt me I was going on but because you are in haste to have it hear the Conclave-author speaking thus in the Preface What new Discoveries have they made in Antaomy these twenty Years Certainly none and I dare presume to say I my self have divulged more new Anatomical Observations which are of greater use than all of 'em in a Bundle Phiol Say you so most mighty Author Are those Worthies lately mentioned of Immortal Mentory those Incomparable Physicians those famous and most Accomplisht Presidents that Learned Fellow of this College to be all cashiered and forgetten with a What new Discoveries have they made in Anatomy these twenty Years You would have the incautious and less-knowing Reader to understand a hundred Years by your slily limited twenty Years The light-headed Gallant must not have one word of hint as if any the least thing in Anatomy had ever been discovered by them before But he shall have his Belly-full of your hidden Discoveries and must swallow them with an Implicite Faith Yet in all the Anatomical Discourses that ever I heard since my coming to this Town which is some many a Year I nev er heard Man Woman or Child neither Learned nor Unlearned no Curious Virtuoso nor Incurious Coxcomb of any kind to mutter the least Syllable of your New Anatomical Observations whereas not only this Town and Kingdom rings but Foreign Universities and Anatomical Authors far and near do with one consent acknowledge aloud how highly they are indebted to our Divine Britain as you called it and particularly to the most Experienced and Learned Physicians of the College of London as in another place for their many improvements of Anatomy I could name divers Members of the College now living whose Names are deservedly Great in that respect
our Actions of the Cases how large a Volume so ever you scribble Of eminent Cases in Physick Mom. I am not only of opinion but possibly certain c. p. 83. Phil. We shall not have room for all your odd Opinions and possible Certainties or rather plain uncertainties We should run into a Volume larger than the Septuagints if we should undertake to examine the truth of all your idle Opinions and uncertain possibilities or your Whimsical Conceits frequent Incoherences pert and dul Expressions and the gross Errors you commit even in your own Mother-Tongue This is not possibly the last time you and I may meet And I would have some pity upon the Reader not to overcharge him too much at a time lest he should come to nauseate the very sight of such course and insipid Fare as you do help us to Give us some of your Certain Conclusions which you have drawn by head and shoulders from the best of your Observation Mom. Why then I may justly conclude among a hundred Physicians you shall find ninety five learned Mountebanks and possibly five Real Physicians p. 85. Phil. The whole Body of the College does not yet make up the Number of a hundred Physicians so that to fill up we would admit one scabbed Sheep into the sound Flock in hopes to cure him But where to place you I know not Sure you will not have the impudence to pretend to a Place among the five Real Physicians and as for the Learned Mountebanks in troth you have not yet deserved so good a Title For it is no great point of Learning to resolve Phaenomena about Wheel-barrows and Potch'd Eggs to descant upon the Whirles of Squibbs or the Expansion of Feathers and Cobwebs but especially about the Application of a Dog's Chops to a Bitches Tail or to explicate and give deep Reasons why a Dog apprehends the Scent of the Excrements under the Bitches Tail to be no ill Scent These nice points might do very well for a Merry-Andrew but can by no means become the Grandeur and Dignity of a Learned Mountebank Learning is a thing of great Value and deserved Esteem even among the Unlearned It is a Rarity too in my Opinion and unless we look after True Learning among a hundred Physicians I cannot tell where to find it in such plenty among a hundred of any other Profession You conclude then that there are Ninety five Learned Men in the hundred Physicians but your kindness must be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 bitter as well as sweet they must be Mountebanks forsooth Prithee which are most like Mountebanks either those Modest Learned Methodical and Experienced Men who never vaunt and boast more than they can do but often do more than they say or he that dares presume to say I my self have divulged more new Anatomical Observations which are of greater use than all of 'em in a Bundle See Preface and who p. 100. presumes to say I dare undertake in a Weeks time to inform the most illiterate Capacity having but an ordinary Memory how to manage those five Courses before mentioned with a better Method and far greater Success than any of these Anatomical Pretenders ever were fortuned with And I can easily make it appear that it is possible to comprehend as many plain and necessary Instructions Rules and Remedies in one single Sheet that by observing of them any man without other advice may in most Cases cure himself with far greater safety speed and success than the best of the Pretenders to Anatomy could ever yet challenge or lay claim unto Ibid. Here you have outdone Thessalus himself that most impudent pretender as Galen calls him and gives us an account of him in his first Book de meth medendi a subject you are often apt to talk of This brazen-fac'd Empirick was grown to that heighth of folly and rashness at Rome that he proclaimed he could teach the whole Art of Physick in half a Years time without mens applying themselves to any other study or learning any thing more Wherefore Coblers Diers Carpenters and Smiths being enticed by his bold and easie pretences did at that time says Galen whole crowds of them leave their Handycrafts and under that Master did betake themselves to physick which ought to have been most Sacred to such men to the destruction of Mankind What would that great Physician have said think you if he had heard of your dare undertake in a Weeks time at London and of your one single sheet wherein you say you can easily make it appear that any man may by you be taught in most cases to Cure himself with far greater safety speed and success than the best of the pretenders to Anatomy could ever yet challenge or lay claim unto Whereas that through-pac'd admirable Physician in the Book aforesaid used the very argument of Anatomy against Thessalus his shameful pretences urging that all Philosophers and knowing men did with one consent agree that no man could be able to Cure Diseases nor had any right to offer at it until he had first search'd into the nature of the whole Body by understanding its Anatomy Now though half a year be a very short time for Carpenters Diers and Smiths to learn the whole Art of Physick you have out-shot him exceedingly who can in one single sheet and in a Weeks time teach any man stranger things than all the Empiricks before you One word more though Thessalus did as you now do speak mighty things of himself and in an Epistle he writ to Nero had these arrogant expressions Seeing that I do make a new Sect of Physicians and the only one of all that is true because all the Physicians who have been before me have writ nothing that is useful either to the preservation of Health or the Cure of Diseases And afterwards says he Hippocrates has taught pernicious Principles At this rate did that Rhodomontado then yelp against Physicians and though he did crack and bounce as you will needs now do yet what is become of his Communitates and Syncritica c. They are all gone perished and forgot We should never have heard of the Wretch by his own Writings unless Galen had thought fit to give a check to his presumption by vouchsafing to expose his folly to Posterity Now you Momus must expect a worse fate of Oblivion for though you have provoked with tooth and nail the Galens as well as the Galenists of our time to take notice of your malevolent and scurrilous Pamphlets against the Faculty yet you see none of those great men will do you that Honour looking on your rage and madness with more Contempt than Anger I would advise you to write your next Project against Physicians in Latin and if you follow the Copy of that pure elegant smooth and oh how excellent Pattern of that nonpareil de Febribus you will give the greater diversion however take your own way write either in your own style having a