Some of us could relate notable storries not long ago acted by them in this kinde which for brevity sake we shall now omit For the first thing they usually declaim against in a Feaver when they have got a Patient in a hopeful way of recovery out of our hands by their insinuating close wayes is that our Medicines if they finde that they be spirituous active and strike upon the Nostrils any whit strongly or affect the Tongue by their Leptomerie and subtil penetrative Atomes are too hot forsooth for the Disease and endanger the inflammation of the Blood causing thirst c. whereupon having by their smooth eloquence possessed the Patient with a dislike of such Remedies they presently fall upon according to the foresaid Maxime the prescribing of cooling Juleps Pâ—isans Emulsions Decoctions saturated with crude Herbs uncorrected juyce of Poppy and the like hardly allowing them a draught of small Beer but by no means any Wine whereby it comes to pass that the Tone and Ferment of the Stomack is subverted Transpiration hindered the Malignity detained the Blood made restagnant the Vital Spirits depauperated losing their activity and force becomming torpid and careless to preserve themselves and the Morbifick matter more tenaceous and at length perhaps the sick Man rid of his Disease and laid cooling in the Church-yard Were it not far better to trust in a Feaver to a Pepper or Mustard Posset a Decoction of Carduus Benedictus Aron and Horse-raddish-roots that quicken the Archeus strengthen the Stomack rarifying and cleansing away the febrile gross viscous matter by Urine and Sweat then to such dull destructive and mortifying Iuleps of the Galenists given according to the pernicious Rule of Contraries How do these men neglect the saying of Hippocrates Naturae that is the vital Spirits principally sunt morborum medicatrices when they will not support and invigorate them with a little Spirit of Wine with which they symbolize above any thing because it conspires with the Feaver and so too hot not considering those qualities of Heat and Cold are but Products and Consequents of the Disease which being removed there presently follows a cessation of them in an instant so that it matters not whether the Medicine be Hot or Cold so it eradicate the Malady which irritates and exasperates the Archeus that it is impatient till it have shut out such an unwelcome guest and according as it makes several Assaults and Onsets upon the occasional Matter so it varies in those momentary and transient qualities of Heat and Cold in the extream parts which are but insignificant in comparision of that which is primarily to be looked after the enabling and advancing the enormontick power of the vital Spirits to profligate the Disease which can be done no better way then by spirituous Liquors which whosoever denieth moderately and seasonably for fear of some small inconvenience which the violation of the Maxime of Contrariety may induce may very well be reputed a pittiful ignorant Physician For we are able to make it appear optically that Wine as it may be ordered in the hands of an Artist is able to conquer many very acute Feavers even that they call a Causus The same reason they observe for the curing of Diarrhaea's Lienteria's Gonorrhaea's Vomitings and Haemorrhagies making use of Astringents and Corroboratives that may diametrically answer the Laxity and weakness of the parts whereby they many times constipate in the Body and as it were wedge in that which Nature went about to extricate whereas any but a daubing and palliating Physician would aim at the extirpation of the original Cause of these Effects which being once expedited all the Products Symptoms Phoenomena and Epigenomena cease immediately But to be short for I must but touch upon these things 't is no wonder and these men take a contrary way to heal Infirmities sith they have alwayes been and still continue so contrary and opposite to the most sound Pyrotechnical Philosophy stiffly holding fast their opinions we fear with one of their great ones who swore in another case se nolle persuaderi etiamsi aliquis persuaserit That he was resolved not to be convinced that he was in an Errour CHAP. XV. A brief Examination of their Pharmacopoea WHat invalidity and impotence to heal Infirmities there is in their Preparations in general set down in the Pharmacopoea Londinensis as a pattern and rule for all their Servants to follow is obvious to any one that hath made a considerable progress in the Theory and Practice of Physick so that he be not prejudicated and carried away by sinister respects It would require a long time to scan and set down at large those Nonsensical Ridiculous Improper and Languid Medicaments they have ordained for the help of man We shall onely compendiously give you a Glance of some of them We finde throughout their whole Dispensatory these remarkable Errours inseparable and common to all their Preparations First we observe a great Defect in the Analysis or opening the body of any Concrete that its Crasis or purer part may be obtained so that what they give is very little of its Virtue separated by halves or drowned and swallowed up with the Scoria Faeces and Excrement of the whole so that it is impossible it should explicate its activity as it ought Secondly we observe what a Congeries Cento Linsey Wolsey of Simples they jumble and clutter together to some scores without any reasonable symbolizing contexture or congruity looking more wayes at once then ever Argus his eyes but still from the principal mark clashing conflicting and at greater hostility with each other then ever their supposed contrary Elements whereby they castrate and rob many a single Ingredient by this confused Hotch-potch of its eminent Properties which being duly prepared and applied would do a Physicians business Thirdly we cannot but especially take notice and condole the ineffectual frivolous and vain Corrections of those virulent and poisonous Concretes which they take into many of their Compositions thinking it enough to adde to them a little Anniseed Ginger Cinamon or some Gum with the like onely to disguise and palliate no whit to mitigate the violent Powers of those things that are of themselves destructive to our Nature 'T is strange they should be so wilfully ignorant in making no scruple of prescribing ten or twelve grains of Scammony and little less of Colocynthis manifest poisons so uncorrected and yet startle at and are very nice to give four or five grains of Antimonium Diaphoret whose supereminent Purgative operation is taken off by virtue of a Spirituous Salt that purifies and fixes it in the Fire But 't is the custom of these Polypragmones to busie themselves about impertinencies and to neglect matters of greatest weight stumbling at a straw and leaping over a block straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel superstitiously precise in the regulation of the Patients Diet over punctual in the contrivances of Slibber-sauces and withal to
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
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
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
or Hermophraditical name as Galeno-Chymists invented by your brains to blinde the world a name altogether inconsistent with a true Physician who may very well be expressed by two syllables Why hath not your Sect yielded formerly to Helmonts fair Proposal while he was alive that there might be a final conclusion of these Controversies by matter of fact indifferent Iudges appointed on both sides to give their censure Why do ye not accept of the same at this day if ye were not conscious to your selves of your owne weakness What poor shifts and starting-holes have ye found out what pittiful fig-leaves have ye joyned together to cover your nakedness and to wave this fair necessary and most evincing way to discover Truth by Action Contrary to which all your Sophistical Disputes your Paralogismes your Quirks your Tricks and plausible Juggles signifie nothing no nor your great Schollarship not rightly squared and applied to the use and benefit of mankinde and the charity of your neighbour Let not therefore any Physignathus inflatus scientia supercilious Critick chattering Linguist or one that knows how to dispute Problematically and Artificially to deceive his Brother let not such we say who professes and practises Physick being grosly ignorant of the right knowledge of things for the commodity and use of the world boast or vaunt of his glittering endowments in this kinde but let him rather lay his hand upon his heart and considering his own emptiness reflect upon himself how he hath deceived and been deceived and at length let him though a Senior for it is never too late to repent sincerely and be wise to salvation embrace the sound Doctrine of Helmont who will teach him to save mens Lives as he ought If any be so ingenious to say I have done what I can and I know no other way then Bleeding ordinary Purging and Sweating Medicines and doubt whether there be a better and would willingly learn we shall undertake to demonstrate to this man that which will be very satisfactory to him and question not to convince him if he be not notoriously obstinate of his mistakes in this kinde CHAP. XI How much to seek the Galenists are in that necessary Philosophy which directs us to the Cure of Diseases NEeds must the Galenist erre in the cure of Diseases when they are very ignorant of their Causes Their very Fundamentals and Principles in natural Philosophy being false as Helmont hath plainly made it appear What an absurdity is it to take in Fire which is neither a Substance nor an Accident to make up the four Elements and to fetch it from the highest Region next the Moon that it might enter into all Concretes and from these Quaternary Elements to deduce their four Humours Complexions and Temperaments and accordingly to proceed in the Cure of man bending all their forces to remove Qualities Accidents and Products of Diseases leaving the Disease it self behinde What an erroneous Definition have they made of a Feaver and therefore it is no wonder if they go unsuccessfully about the Cure as if there were no more to be done but to take an Indication from preternatural Heat and so to cool in the same degree for the restauration of the Patient to his former sanity making that essential to a Feaver which is but a meer product depending upon the exorbitancy of the Archeus or vital Spirits What errour can be more gross then to maintain that the natural Heat of the Stomack by means of the parts adjacent is able to alter what is taken into it so powerfully that in a short time even such hard Bodies as Bones Iron and Glass are dissolved in it which the Culinary Fire cannot easily conquer taking no notice that the Stomack of Fishes are actually cold and yet digest most vigorously Surely 't is very improbable that these men should rectifie the indigestion and defects of the Stomack that know not how it performs its office aright Hence it comes to pass that they often destroy by their faeculent Medicines the Eucrasie or Tone of that part which ought to be taken into care above any in the whole Body Analogous to Fire they have brought in an Humour called Choller part whereof they say is gathered into a Receptacle of a Bladder which overflowing and exceeding they affirm causes the Jaundies and many other Diseases depending upon that Humour reckoning that an Excrement to be purged out with Rhubarb that is of most noble use which no perfect Creature can want neither Beasts Fowl or Fish ordained by God as a special Balsom to preserve the Body from putrefaction by virtue of which the second Digestion is performed the Acide juyce of the Stomack being converted into a Saline Their ignorance herein hath produced many capital Errours in Physick which would be too tedious to insist upon From the Element of Earth they have deduced another Humour called Melancholly which they have placed in the Spleen reputing it a part destinated for that purpose never dreaming till Helmont divulged it that in it and the continuate Arteries is resident a ferment of most admirable use for the Digestion of the the Stomack which being interrupted through multiplicity of occasional Causes engender various Diseases as Scurvy Plurisie Quartanes c. which they neither know how to cure nor by their good wills would suffer others What a miserable Errour is it in Philosophy to assert that the Stone in the Kidneys and Bladder is engendred from Phlegme which they say symbolizes with the Element of Water which Humour by power of a graduated Heat but where to be found in the Body we know not is brought to that stony consistence which how to break they are altogether unwitting unless by the knife It hath been a common practice to keep their Patients some moneths to Diet-drinks of Guaiacum Sarzaparilla Sassafras out of an intent of drying up superfluous moisture and imaginary Catarrhs in the Body as if one of their strong Purges would not more effectually answer that Indication in one day better then their former course in a moneth These things Helmont hath plainly shewed to be ridiculous Who in his right wits will take these men to be found Philosophers that attribute the cause of extream thirst in a Feaver simply to Heat and Drought whereas at the same time a great quantity of cool liquor floats in the Stomack to some pints perhaps They see Hydropick persons abound with great quantity of moisture all over the body and yet cannot be provoked to sweat however they never gave us any clear Reason thereof till Helmont appeared Infinite have been their mistakes in Nature and false Hypotheses to the detriment of mans life which are sufficiently laid open by that great Philosopher Helmont And therefore having given you a little glimpse of these things that ye may conceive ex ungue leonem we shall referre you to know more of that worthy Author who hath delineated and characterized them exactly from whom we
Vein contiguous to the part affected is opened that the faeculent Blood contained therein oppressing it may be directly and moderately discharged that thereby the residue may be more difflable and easie to be discussed Likewise when there is some muddy foul Cruor restagnant about the Spleen and Womb threatning an Abscess or some other malady c. in this condition the Opening the inward Haemorrhoides or Uterine Veins may sometime profit without dammage to the whole supposed the Physician be destitute of those generous Arcana's that are able without any solution of continuity to reach the part affected and to conquer the Disease radically by mundifying the Blood and by ridding it of that Thorny Vexatious and Virulent acidity of the Latex that oftentimes gets into it All this seriously weighed who would not avoid this Blood-sucking course and rather commit himself to such a Physician who not as a meer illiterate Empyrick or Quacksalver ventures his Medicine at random without any sound reason or intellectual notion of what wherefore when and how much of it he gives but being throughly acquainted with the Diagnôsis of the Disease is able upon very firm grounds to make a Prognôsis of it and so to proceed to a Therapeia according to just necessary and direct Indications accurately designing an Adaptation Appropriation and Adaequation of the Remedy to the Disease Away then with this detestable lavish Phlebotomy that hath destroyed more then Tobacco or the Sword together may it be banished the Court City and Countrey nor ever be depended upon hereafter in this Island or any of His Majesties Territories for the cure of any difficult Disease but let it be confined and inflicted as a feral Plague upon all those that delight in Blood and hate our Gracious Sovereign and all his loyal Subjects CHAP. XIII Of the second Supporter fruitless Purgation T Is not without great reason that excellent Hippocrates mentions one Aphorisme no less then four several times 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is If that be carried out of the Body by Purgation that ought to be the sick man findes himself the better for it and his spirits more chearful and better able to bear his Disease as if he had foreseen the great mischief that was like to come upon indiscreet Evacuation with deletery Catharticks which putrefie and colliquate the lately tinged Chymus into a faetide and cadaverous substance whereby some juggling Physicians take opportunity to impose upon their credulous Patients that they are in a fair way of recovery though they finde it otherwise sith so many ill Humours as Choller Phlegme c. are purged out of their Bodies whereas in very truth not a jot of the morbifick Cause hath been so much as touched We have a History to confirm this out of Helmont experto credamus for the worthy Author tells us that taking his leave of a young Lady holding her by the hand he caught the Itch whereupon he sent for two of the most eminent Galenical Physicians in that City to consult with for the cure of it who upon the sight of a Purulent Scab presently delivered their opinions That there was abundance of Adust Choller and Salt Phlegme in his Body which occasioned a depraved Sanguification in his Liver Upon this account after they had largely bled him and prepared the Humour forsooth with their fulsom and nauseous Apozemes containing about fifty Ingredients with addition of Agarick Rhubarb every fourth or fifth morning to the end that this supposed retorrid Choller and Salt Phlegme might be drawn forth according to that innate similitude of Substance that they would fain make us believe is between the Purgative and the Humour and at length they gave him those virulent Pills de Fumaria every third day three times which wrought so liberally that they almost filled two buckets with the foresaid Humours But hear with what event in his own words Iam venae mihi exhaustae erant Genae conciderant vox rauca totus corporis habitus concidens tabuerat descensus quoque è cubiculo atque gressus erant difficiles quia genua me vix sustinebant That is Thus at length were my Veins emptied my Cheeks fallen away and I could hardly speak for hoarsness my whole Body was wasted so that I could hardly get down out of my Chamber it being most tedious to me to stir for my Legs were scarce able to bear me up yea my Stomack failed that I had neither Appetite nor Digestion and withall my Itch was as bad as ever Thus was this great Philosopher who at first setting aside this Cutaneous infection was found Winde and Limb as we say brought almost to the gates of Death by this enormous Purgation who without doubt might have been cured very suddenly if that true peccant matter which is the principal occasional cause of Diseases and is but little in quantity had been carried off by some appropriate Solutive and the Miasma which stole in through the pores of the Skin and there settled in the innate Archeus had been mortified which course Helmont at last took for his recovery after he had been macerated and excarnified by a Hypercatharsis alwayes accompanied with a Dysphoria and ill effect This remarkable Story of Helmont the same being re-acted many thousand times since may give men a strict Caveat how they put their Lives into the hands of such desperate persidious Evacuators who cast men into Purgatory and yet never expiate the Disease Assuredly those Physicians that exterminate out of the Body good and bad at random the Cruor or good Juyce and the Scoria or Dross with such uncorrected Catharticks that are no better then absolute poison leaving sometimes an impression behinde hardly deleble seldom giving any alleviation unless as clavus clavum expellit per accidens may be very well compared to a mad person that in cleansing a foul house casteth out with the filth some of the most useful Furniture belonging to it And yet what is more commonly practised amongst the Galenists who being consulted do upon the bare inspection of the Urine frequently and rashly prescribe Bleeding and Purging the last whereof being best of the two though bad enough as they order the matter doth generally more mischief then good We speak not this utterly to condemn some moderate Evacuations both by Vomit and Stool sith we our selves oftentimes intend the same and make it our Scope but we never give them so uncorrected as they to the injury and impairing of Nature but they are such that are alwayes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 consentient and competent Remedies for the profligatiag the Disease leaving behinde an Euphoria an alacrity of the Patient and an abatement of the Infirmity according to his capacity Neither do we depend upon Solutives simply as sufficient to cure any difficult Disease but having often that most excellent Rule of Hippocrates in our thoughts 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to carry the Morbifick matter that way Nature
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