that brings the Life into confusion disorder and at last perhaps to a sad Catastrophe by a tedious impertinent groundless absurd and fruitless means quite beside the mark or he that sweetly composes pacifies and allayes the disorders irregularity exorbitancies and tumults in the Microcosme by direct and adequate applications and appropriations of those friendly Medicines which may assist Nature immediately to conquer its grand enemy the Disease that at length there may be a happy conclusion to Health without your insalutiferous Method What man that hath been throughly cured of a dangerous Disease in a short time by us will ever finde any fault that we did not use your long Method a meer Ens Rationis invented to delude the world Are ye to be excused that go far about to destroy your Patients notwithstanding your tinkling and trapped Arguments and Conclusions deduced from false Premises For our parts we had by far rather enjoy an ability in our Profession to relieve a languishing wretch tortured and racked with some cruel Malady then by making a great noise in the world puffed up with empty knowledge be reputed great and eminent Schollars but altogether ignorant in the cure of a Disease Frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora is known to every ingenious man If we Heal in a fortnight a Sickness that ye cannot in a moneth are not we the best Methodists If we strike at the Root of a Disease ye at the Branches if ye mistake in applying Agents rightly to Patiens erring egregiously in the Primary Efficient and Material Causes of a Disease often blundering and overseen in your Prognosticks and extreamly blinde in the proper Crasis of things thus groping in the dark are seduced by the Ignes fatui of your Elements Humours Temperaments seldom unless by accident hitting the mark as ye ought your Patients sanity If we can give a better evidence and Phisolophical account that we are in the right in Iatrical Practice above you If we when we come to our Patient after some short inquisition shall declare that there is such a cause of his Disease and that the subject of it is in such a part and that if he be observant we shall in some little time satisfie him whether we have a Remedy sufficiently potent to make Nature master of the Disease or no and so accordingly make our Prediction confidently and that on the fifth or sixth day after our first visit in acute Diseases If we peremptorily deliver that by Gods help we doubt not but to cure him and bring to pass the same without relapse or succeeding Diseases far better then the Galenists will not any man say that we are the best Methodists What signifies it if ye abound with hundreds of Medicaments composed by your own Apothecaries which ye say ye use according to Indications and not one of these a competent or adequate remedy for many great Diseases Is it not better to enjoy twenty or thirty good Auxiliary Preparations made with our own fingers the meanest whereof shall be more effectual then the best of yours and these used not as ye falsly object at Random at a Venture but Rationally and according to a just Techmarsis taken from Nature and the Disease the one whereof we shall as ought to be done assist to overcome the other by removing impediments and occasional causes by purifying and strengthning the Organs by tinging the parts with some excellent and appropriate Balsom by invigorating and rectifying the ferment of the Stomack and other parts by dulcifying the degenerate sharp Latex which infests the Blood Viscera or any instrument by expunging and razing out the Character or Idaea of the Disease in the Archeus or Vital Spirits lastly by pacifying the displacency tumults fury and exorbitancy of the Archeus And when we have made the truth of these things appear in the presence of modest indifferent and discreet Judges we shall give sound satisfactory Philosophical Reasons of what we have done which we will undertake to elucidate thus We will so many of us on each side as we shall agree upon visit the sick people of some Hospital with equal and competent Arbiters or Censors After that each party hath given his Verdict and Opinion of the nature of the Disease inward or outward we will make our Prediction what is like to be the Epilogue or Event thereof whether it be curable or no and in what time probably it may be brought to pass Let the Galenist or Helmontian that doth according to the Sentence of those elected persons to whose award we are to stand perform his business best in the Diagnostick Prognostick and Therapeutick part prevail and be taken into the favour and tuition of the Magistrate and the other be rejected and banished out of the City with disgrace never to appear here to practise Physick any more Or we will deal with you in this manner we will summon so many Patients that have Feavers or other Diseases in the City whom we will visit together and according to our former proposition enter upon a direct proof who may best deserve a Diplôma or Patent Or we will if ye please act severally we will with so many impartial Judges undertake twenty persons that have Acute Diseases and so many Chronick after that we have illustrated the Nature Condition and Magnitude of the Disease to the standers by our foresaid Arbitratours we will enter upon the Cure with a Prognostick in Acute Diseases after our first admission upon the fifth or sixth day and in Chronick Diseases in the space of three weeks or a moneth at farthest Ye shall be bound to act the like the same Supervisors attending you that did us who after they have seriously weighed all Circumstances being rightly informed and considered what difficulties both parties have been put upon shall determine as each of us have done better or or worse who are the true Artists and so receive a Reward or Mulct Moreover we declare that we shall take into our hands twenty sick persons that have Acute Feavers of what kinde soever and of these twenty we will engage to secure under God Sixteen of them upon the fifth or sixth day after our approach or to give a Prognostick upon the same dayes how the Disease will terminate in which if we fail we shall be willing to suffer accordingly supposed that ye come to the like trial And because ye insist so much upon Bleeding and there is no Disease according to your own Positions that requires it more then a Pleurisie we dare oblige our selves to cure more Pleuritick persons citò tutò jucundè without Bleeding then ye shall making use of the same This is the way great Doctors for you to redeem the credit of this noble Science and to restore it in some part to its pristine Renown and doubt not if ye do your business as ye should but that our Sovereign Lord the King will give you a Diploma and
spending your dayes about impertinent and superfluous Searches in stinking Carcasses which are never able to teach you how to destroy the Rampant Diseases daily breaking violently into these living Houses without Pyrotechnical Anatomy which alone can reclude the Secrets of Nature and shew us where every Disease is seated and by what effectual wayes it may be disturbed and thrown out of that Vital Light in which it lives and dyes CHAP. VII A just reproof of the Ignorance of most of them in Surgery CErtainly it was an evil Design at first and a plain demonstration of idleness and pride in Physicians when they brake into parts those Faculties which did formerly and should alwayes indivisibly reside in one man We confess Fractures and Dislocations require the hand of a professed Artist that is throughly versed in Anatomy and accurate Experience in this kinde but when Medicines taken inwardly are principally to perform the Cure outward as well as inward Diseases belong to the Physician so it may be done to the encouragement of the Professours of Surgery sith honos alit artes as the matter stands now it is not amiss for the Surgeon to have a share in the profit although the Physician hath the greatest hand in the Cure We have oftentimes admired the Ignorance of some Galenists that have not been able to undertake a Whitlow a Scald a green wound a trivial Soar but have been forced to send them to a Surgeon living remote as if it no whit concerned them and as if any one could be a true Physician and be destitute of that which essentially belongs to his Art Needs must that Physician be extreamly mutilated in his knowledge that is to seek to cure a Phlegmon an Erysipelas Fistula or malignant Ulcer For we can confidently averre and make it evident that 't is the inward Medicament that must principally cure most outward Discases if they be ever radically and to a purpose healed outward Applications being oftentimes of no effect Yet we will not deny some virulent Ulcers may to a wonder receive sanation by vertue of Chymical Preparations outwardly applied as Balsamum Fuliginis Balsamum Sameck the pure Sulphur of Venus Antimony and other Minerals of which none but a true Son of Art can be possessour But above all is to be extolled that admirable Magnetical way of curing which doubtless if rightly improved would work stupendious things so that some Galenist would presently conclude that there is Witchery or some supernatural means made use of So blinde and stupid they are in the most needful Phylosophy that what their Brains cannot conceive they presently reject as Diabolical or impossible Tell them of the Alkahest or universal Menstruum of Lapis Chrysopeius Lapis Butleri of a Panacaea they will but deride and flout at it boldly and presumptuously denying any such thing to be in rerum natura because their shallow wits being altogether soused and steeped in durty Humours Qualities Temperaments Mixtures and Contrarieties never had the happiness to have the least glimpse of the admirable perfections of such things This we can set down positively as a truth that that Physician that knows not something of the Cure of Diseases both inward and outward this way is but a meer novice alwayes learning and never like to come to any perfection in his Art Let him be never so much applauded for his excellent parts and great Learning he shall alwayes be esteemed by the wisest an Ideot in Phylosophy altogether ignorant of the radical and intrinsecal causes of things We doubt not but there is excellent use of Manual operation where the Knife is to perform the Cure as in Amputations of parts Lithotomie and the like But we know this experimentally that both Physician and Surgeon are too forward to lop off parts and butcherly to cut holes in the skin whereas many times this bloody course might be omitted and the sick person restored in great part if not altogether to his pristine health without mutilation or sauciation as we could instance of late in a Gentleman belonging to a Noble man whose Leg after all their tedious torturing and frivolous attempts as Blood-letting Purgation Salivation Sudorificks Diet-drinks Mercurial Applications and Cauteries they at length despairing of his Recovery advised to be cut off which God by means of his poor servant a Chymical Physician prevented the Gentleman being restored to his perfect health and his Limb saved It were to be wished that ye would study to dissolve and reduce into their first matter those Coagulations frequently hapning as Scrofulous Tumors Nodes Scirrosities Ganglions Wens c. without Scarifications and Incisions but especially to bend your whole strength to finde out some potent Arcanum which God no doubt hath created for the untying and colliquating that monstrous Product in mans Body the Stone without cruel Lithotomie by a frightfull Knife Did you not despond to finde and supinely slight the pursuit of something in this kinde yea if ye did not maliciously discourage others without controversie such an Arcanum might have probably been brought to light able to dissolve the Stone even in the Bladder But it is enough for you to rest your selves contented with the old profitable way of Perforating and broaching the Body which if it fail ye presently protest ye have done as much as Art can which narrowly examined by a judicious Physician would perhaps prove very impotent How often have ye received credit and applause from the world when in the Dissection of dead Bodies ye have found any of the Viscera corrupted or hard congealed substance as stones in the Kidney Gall or other parts justifying and magnifying your selves that more could not have been done by Art whereas peradventure at that time ye were first admitted the Corruption might have been hindred and Coagulations dissolved Some few years since a Chymical Physician expelled three large Stones nestling about the region of the Spleen the least as big as a large Turky's egg out of a Maid-servants Body by virtue of some Paracelsian Medicines perfectly restoring her to health which she enjoyes to this day whom we are confident if a Galenist had undertaken he would by his Blood-letting pernicious Purgation Blisterings c. have destroyed and the cause of her Disease should never have been discovered unless by accident the Knife had made it appear which would have sufficiently excused the Galenist and cleared him as one that did what possibly could be done by Art CHAP. VIII What a noise our Adversaries make with their Laboratory and how they vaunt that they use Chymical Medicines according to their Method YE make your boast that ye possess as well as we your Laboratory and variety of Furnaces That ye use Chymical Preparations according to your Method not as we do at random That ye knowing the ill qualities and properties of them and how hazardous they are do upon a pinch flye to them having made use of first other safe Medicines These are fair
to be prejudicate and partial and if ever thou shouldest need us we shall endeavour to gratifie thee with that Physick which we are confident no Galenist in England possesses Now if it fall out that our faithful and wholesom counsel herein should through the subtil wiles and and crafty devices of our enemies be rejected we shall rest our selves contented that we have done our duty and shall shake off the dust of our feet upon them qui valdè volunt perire being satisfied that their perdition is from themselves Geo. Tomson The Contents CHAP. I. A Short Description of Galen from whom they are denominated Galenists Pag. 1 CHAP. II. An account of that true Chymical Philosopher and learned Physician Helmont whom we Own for our Patron pag. 4 CHAP. III. Of the Abuses and disrepute the Galenists have brought upon Physick and the Reformation they have of late pretended 7 CHAP. IV. How the Galenists have domineered in the World and deceived it 15 CHAP. V. In what space of time a good Physician may resolve his Patient of the Event of his Disease 21 CHAP. VI. How much precious time the Galenists spend in Anatomical Curiosities to little purpose 25 CHAP. VII A just reproof of the Ignorance of most of them in Surgery 30 CHAP. VIII What a noise our Adversaries make with their Laboratory and how they vaunt that they use Chymical Medicines according to their Method 35 CHAP. IX An Answer to some Objections laid to our charge by the Galenists 38 CHAP. X. An Expostulation why the Dogmatists will not come to the touchstone of true Experience 41 CHAP. XI How much to seek the Galenists are in that necessary Philosophy which directs us to the Cure of Diseases 44 CHAP. XII Of the two grand Supporters of the Galenical Physick Phlebotomy and Purgation 48 CHAP. XIII Of the second Supporter fruitless Purgation 56 CHAP. XIV Of that fictitious Rule of Contraries by which the Dogmatists are guided in the cure of Diseases 65 CHAP. XV. A brief Examination of their Pharmacopoea 70 CHAP. XVI A Cursory View of the Mineral waters to which the Dogmatists flye as to a Sanctuary in Difficult Cases 77 CHAP. XVII A Vindication of Chymical Medicines from that false Accusation of being Dangerous 83 CHAP. XVIII Of the Galenical Method 90 CHAP. XIX Of the Helmontian Method 96 CHAP. XX. Some Animadversions upon the late Attempt to procure a Patent from His Gracious Majesty for the Erecting a Colledge of Chymical Physicians 103 A History of three large Stones excluded the Colon by Chymical Medicines 109 Galeno-pale OR A Chymical Trial of the Galenists that their Dross in Physick may be discovered CHAP. I. A short Description of Galen from whom they are denominated Galenists THe great Patron to whose Decrees and Dictates right or wrong the Dogmatists have obliged themselves to subscribe is Galen of Pergamus in Asia who lived about fifteen hundred years past in the time of Adrian He was a man doubtless of excellent parts and very laborious but took a very indirect course to make a discovery of the Truth of things as they are in themselves by bringing them to the touchstone of sound Experience by making an Analysis or Resolution of Bodies that their Principles might be laid open and their Heterogeneities manifested without which it is impossible for any man to be a Philosopher as he ought He had a great ambition of writing much as it plainly appears by those voluminous Tracts that are now extant besides what are lost for 't is reported that he wrote four hundred Books in Physick to what good purpose any discreet impartial man may easily judge His loquacity hath much affected some men who count Learning principally to consist in variety of Languages Polylogie and plausible Argumentations though deduced from false Axioms Hippocrates his concise Aphoristical Doctrine written according to the sincerity and candor of that age was amplified and vainly enlarged by his fruitless and frivolous Comments to a huge bulk contrived on purpose to get a fame in the World by those that are ready to subscribe to any Positions of Antiquity for their ease rather then to Anatomize things as they ought by the Fire that thereby they may be reduced into the visible parts So ignorant herein was their great Master Galen that he never saw either Rose-water or Quicksilver How much to seek he was in Anatomy Vesalius hath delivered who makes it to appear in many places that he never dissected the Body of man In the Botanicks or knowledge of Plants he hath instructed the World no more then Dioscorides his predecessour whom he hath plainly transcribed in many places word for word concealing the Author sticking in the mire of the four Elements their Mixture Qualities and Temperaments neglecting the Virtus Cherionia Crafts and specifick properties of Simples His followers have and do even obstinately to this day to the destruction of millions cry up his method a tedious way to cure Diseases but a short one to get money The two principal Pillars that support this rare Method are Phlehotomy and Purgation both of which we can demonstrate to be pernicious to Humane Nature destroying more then ever the Sword In the knowledge of the Causes Quiddity or Essence immediate Subject and radical Cure of Diseases an incurable Catalogue whereof he hath delivered to posterity that he was extream blinde we shall undertake to evince and prove è facto All this duly considered would make a man stand amazed to see how refractorily his Disciples do maintain to this day those rotten principles in Physick derived from him and how wilfully they hood-wink themselves delighting in the darkness of their own erroneous Tenents lest they should behold the bright beams of Chymical Philosophy to the diminution of their own sinister respects CHAP. II. An account of that true Chymical Philosopher and learned Physican Helmont whom we Own for our Patron HElmont a German was without all question ordained in these last times by especial providence of God for the comfort and relief of distressed Man to be an instrument to discover those gross Errours and notorious abuses in Physick that have relation to the Life and Soul of Man committed by those that rested themselves contented to be ignorant with Antiquity and enjoy profit honour and ease rather then question any thing delivered to them how false soever by making a severe scrutiny into the bottom of Nature by difficult labours with their own hands and great expence of their purses This Worthy Man who we confess hath instructed us in the Principles of Philosophy was omnifariam doctus one that was very knowing in the Doctrine of the Ancients having made a wonderful speedy progress in the Learning of the Schools as well versed in the Languages as the best Galenist who after that he had rolled every stone in the old Philosophy and ran through that Cyclopeodie or universal Learning yet could finde no solid satisfaction in the natural Causes of things
till he came to Pyrotechnie wherein he laboured fifty years compleat leaving those lying Sophisms that he had imbibed contemplating things as they were in themselves Hereby he learnt the genuine beginnings of all Concretes making separation of them into their fundamental parts dissolving and coagulating fixing and volatilizing Bodies looking narrowly into the defects alteration life and death of things extracting dividing conjoyning several bodies bringing what was crude to maturation and promoting natural Causes by removing those impediments that they could not arrive at their just ends Hence he dived into the Seminal virtues and properties of things and was able to give an account of their true efficient and natural Causes bringing to light the Doctrine of Fermentation the Original and activity of Spirits with the rare Effects of Tinctures and this by Mechanical demonstration of the Fire This is he that hath plainly detected the most absurd perilous Doctrine of the Galenists proving their palpable ignorance of the Causes of Diseases and their proper Cures setting down infallible Arguments to evince how destructive their Bleeding and Purgations are to mankinde challenging them to make good what he had delivered by visible instances and examples of fact which they would never come to nor ever dared to answer him by way of confutation but by denying all that he had proposed giving him scurrilous and opprobrious language as it is their common custom when they have nothing to say for themselves calling him Fanatick Innovator Dreamer carping at any lapse or Peccadillo in his Writings with aggravations to the height hating and abhorring to the death all those that stood up in his behalf naming them Hereticks in Physick and all this gratis dictum without the least tittle of truth Thus hath this worthy man been sleighted villified and reproached for not still conniving at those capital Errours in Physick which they have greedily swallowed down without any scruple to the ruine of millions However let these pittiful Physicians rail at and calumniate this Heroe 't is our duty who have received so much benefit from him to acknowledge him our Master and to maintain his true Positions to the utmost of our power against all gain-sayers CHAP. III. Of the Abuses and disrepute the Galenists have brought upon Physick and the Reformation they have of late pretended YE have of late made a great stir though to little purpose and credit to procure a Power from the Supreme Authority of the Nation that ye might make a Reformation in this Noble Profession of Physick there being as ye say no visible means left but your selves to compass it But what was your drift in this Truly we believe the first thing next the enslaving the poor Apothecaries would have been a total Suppression of those that had opposed your fictitious Principles false Axioms and indirect practices in Physick that then ye might have domineered as ye pleased But stay a while we hope the Sage Magistrate will take it into consideration that ye are the chiefest persons that need reformation and that your Purgations need purgation they being as we can prove by matter of fact not fitting so uncorrected to be taken into the Body We hope moreover they will take notice that your Bloody course ought to be voted cruel and unchristian the Life or Soul being seated in the Blood God having created the Medicines of the Earth not Bleeding cutting holes in the Skin Blisterings and such like butchering Tortures to cure miserable man 'T is true there are sad exorbitancies irregularities and abuses in Physick but who we pray have been the principal occasions of them but your selves who have conjured up such Swarms of Quacks in every place who like Locusts eat the bread out of honest Physicians mouths by your Profane Prescripts and now you would fain lay them down but ye cannot for they are become too potent for you some of them having so well improv'd their time that they are like for ought we can see to cast you out of the saddle and to ride with Foot-cloaths themselves dealing but deservedly with you If ye had better practised the Pythagorical Doctrine these things had never been or had ye delivered your selves as ye finde fault Paracelsus Helmont and other sons of Art did more obscurely and Aenigmatically who foresaw these mischiefs and endeavoured to prevent them Physick had flourished to this day in its splendor and beauty But as ye have handled the matter every Good-wife any silly fellow may read your Dispensatory use some of those Medicines without your method and sometimes no less success yea and may laugh at some of those ridiculous Compositions discovered to them by your trusty servant Culpepper But all this is no hinderance but a furtherance to encrease your Practice as we have heard some of you say sith these illiterate Ideots do but make work for you Is it so but we much doubt it surely if ye aimed at this at first to multiply these men to augment Mortalities for your advantage it was a very wicked Design not to be endured by a Nation but if this be fallen out through your incogitance accidentally that these men have brought in the more gain to you to the detriment and ruine of the people and simply for this reason ye desire to be Arnautists or self-deniers why do ye pretending to the Higher Powers a Publick Good not likewise instruct them in some way how the indigent Commonalty may be cured better and cheaper giving us infallible testimonies of some rare Cures above others and your zealous charity for your Neighbours by abating your excessive Fees and by curing him gratis that hath faln into Thieves like the good Samaritan And we think it were but just that they who have gotten such Riches in Physick as some of you undoubtedly by the destruction of those that might have been preserved should Zaccheus-like impart a portion to those that are distressed And certainly there is now great need of this retribution and as the state of things stands another course must be taken without this costly Physick to cure the Poor of the Nation which if our prudent Senators shall please to listen to we shall in all humility propose to their wise considerations beseeching them to consider what sad consequences must of necessity have come upon a Concession to the presumptuous Desires of these men How thousands of poor People must have neglected the means and so have run the hazard of perishing having not wherewithal to seek to these chargeable Doctors for recovery the Apothecary not daring to sell them a little London Treacle Mithridate c. unless authorized by them as if their Prescripts were able to infuse new Virtues into Medicines Neither should any have stretched forth his hand to have pulled his languishing Brother out of the ditch unless licensed by them What we pray should our City have done if some Epidemical contageous Disease as the Plague had reigned amongst us sith they according to