Parliamentary Monument of your magnanimous example to succeeding Ages and the annuary Registers of after-times shall insert it in their Ephemeris and in their Catalogue of notable things and though not the Dominical yet is such Capital letters that they shall compute and reckon From sucâ— a time so long I know you know that notwithstanding the man overtures that have been made and stout lifts have been given towards this main designe yet there are many things left to your hands to do and I wish it were in my power to shew and your patience to hear them or view them in their large particularities which must be set down in a general draught onely And a high enterprise worthy Sirs a high enterprise it is and a hard and such as every seventh son of a seventh son does not venture on yet in the boldness of Truth I shall proceed fearless Wherein is our Vniversities reformed or what amendment of her Fundamental Constitutions How ill dispos'd are those few Colledges in this Land that should be collateral or subservient to this designe Or wherein do they contribute to the promotion or discovery of Truth Where have we Professors and Lectures of the three principal Faculties and how cold and lazily are they read and carelesly followed Where a serious disquisition of all the old Tenents Where have we any thing to do with Mechanick Chymistrie the handmaid of Nature that hath outstript the other Sects of Philosophy by her multiplied real experiences Where is there an examination and consecution of Experiments encouragements to a new world of Knowledge promoting compleating and actuating some new Inventions Where have we constant reading upon either quick or dead Anatomies or an ocular demonstration of Herbs Where a Review of the old Experiments and Traditions and casting out the rubbish that has pestered the Temple of Knowledge How are Mechanicks countenanced and encouraged in the concrete but not in the abstract when the illiterate rude and the dregs of men and but a farraginous Syndrome of Knaves and Fools hudled together their habilities not being tempered nor consistent to enlarge the Territories of Truth and Learning whose unqualified Intellectuals unable to rectifie the errours of their Reason cannot reach unto half the advantage of their Knowledge and are onely fit to maintain Errour and their present Practice of which many of them can give no reason and commonly but the apish Prentices of some old dotard Citizen who have as much wit as their Masters and that like knotty and crabbed blocks has been writhed into them being tawed open by wedge after wedge and know onely what has been hammered into them by ill Methods and thumping Tutors are the onely white boyes while the rare Founders and Inventors whose labours have been salt unto them who have spent much sweat and oil or persons as well in every degree qualified and seasoned with sprightly industrious endowments who carry Mines and Forges in their heads and have a greater vivacity of more sublime and refined spirits and understandings above theirs that taught them what they know are dejected as being disengaged from ingenious enquiries and proofs of their towardly and man-like abilities and endowments by a cold requital of their several redemptions of Truth and dismission of their Intellectual and Rational or Mechanick Manufactures with censure and obloquie of Singularities or a cold encouragement to perfect their begun Idaea's into actual existence and real entities and substantialities That this is not then Honorable Heroes the disburdening of a particular fancie or the humorous complaint of one so addicted to the made of Melancholy as to render him distracted testie or troublesome but the common grievance and I do but now make their suspirations articulate of all those who have prepared their mindes and studies and took their flight above the lowe pitch of Vulgarity to advance Truth in others and from others to entertain it thus much may evince and satisfie And in their name I shall for neither friend nor foe conceal what the general murmure is That Truth and the once-lovely body of Learning is become a deformed and ill-favoured Medusa with her tresses full of Addâ—rs and her limbs like that of Osiris King of Argives mangled body lies torn and scattered in as many pieces and that they are as hard to finde and re-unite as his was That there is no publike encouragement given to the sad friends of Learning such as dare appear in a day of need those gallant industries imitating the careful search that Isis made for her Osiris violated form that go up and down and endeavour to gather them up limb by limb as they can finde them and as much as may be re-compose them This were the neer utter disheartning and discontentment not of the mercenary crew of falfe pretenders to Learning but of the free and ingenuous sort of such as evidently were constellated to Studie and love Vertue and Learning for it self not for lucre or any other end but the service of Truth and their Country if they were not really prejudg'd and possest and easily assured of your gallant intentions and enterprises with your active endeavours in seeking to wipe off the imputation of intending to discourage the progress and advance of Learning and to confute all the scandals of your deadly adversaries who have been stout Subjects to the Anarchy of Detraction and have took all liberty to speak you worse then Goths and Vandals and the utter destroyers of all civility and Literature by the serious composing your selves to the designe of cherishing of either And when we make reflection back of what great things you have done for us equal to what hath been done in any Nation either stoutly or fortunately and what steps you have made forward in this great designe we are led to believe a gallant progress you will make and bring us back from that great distance we have run in a line from the first point of errour to almost its largest latitude and dissomination from the Aequator of Truth into the true Caus-way and unto our journies end Now how this may be effected I have neither vanity nor impudence enough to direct you But he whose heart can bear him to the high pitch of your noble enterprises it cannot but tell him that the power which he addresses himself unto cannot not onely do it in a better manner then he can think of but in a fuller and may easily assure himself that the prudence and laudable far-judging industrious diligence of so grave a Magistracie sitting in Parliament who have before their eyes the ruines of Learning and cannot be insensible of the cruelties and unsuccesfulness of the Medical profession onâ— main limb of Vniversal Learning cannot reject the cleanness of these reasons and these allegations both here and within offer'd them nor can overlook the necessity that there is of reforming this piece of Knowledge and studying more probable means and finding out more whole some
the afflictions and languishing miseries of men and yet destroies them might spend its utmost date in this Common-Wealth and that there might be some course taken in the body of Physick in this Nation that the squalid diseases of Physick and medicines might be cured without which no hopes of ever curing the sicknesses of the body of man this therefore shall be the steerage the taske and period of this discourse to prove That the whole mode method and body of Physick as it is now prescribed and practised with the desires of good men groans for a reformation I thinke I shall have no just Cause to complain of any thing but that it is indeed too copious to be the matter of a dispute or a defence rather to be yielded as in the best ages a thing of common reason not of controversie To write in that in which there is no beaten path is most honourable for he that leades hath this advantage above others if others follow him he hath the glory of it if not he hath the excuse of prejudice He therefore who by adventuring shal be so happy as with successe to light the way of such an expedient liberty and truth as this shall restore the much abused overwrong'd and eclipsed glory and renown of Physick and shall deserve of all apprehensive men considering the ruines the dangers and dreadfull effects the ignorance errors abuses impieties and cruelties of Physitians in a thing of so great price whose losse is irreparable and most perilous to humane estate which for want of insight into and reformation in the practise of Physick have been committed in this as well as other Common-wealths shall deserve I say to be reck'ned among the publick Benefactors of civil and humane life equal nay above the Inventours of wine and oyle for this namely health is a farre dearer farre nobler and more desireable cherishing to mans life unworthily and unmercifully expos'd to ruine and danger In which work he whose courage can serve him to give the first onset must look for two Hydra's of several oppositions the one from them who would exact the tunnage and poundage of all knowledge and skill and excise all ingenuity and Autergie who have sworn themselves to long custome and the affected tedious scrible of Galen whose whole spheare of reason art skill and practise turnes in Galens Zenith and his accomplices will not out of the road The other from those whose formal ignorance grosse and vulgar apprehensions together with their grave obstinacy 'twixt whom an entire league hath ever been held conceit but low of Physick whose cloudy and imperfect opticks could never endure to pry into the Mysteries of Nature and in the work of healing thinke they have all This only is desir'd of them who are minded to judge hardly of thus maintaining that they would be stil and heare all out nor thinke it equall to answer deliberate reason with sodain heat and noise remembring this that many truths now of reverend esteem and Credit had their birth and beginning once from singular and private thoughts while the most of men were otherwise possess'd and had the fate at first to be generally exploded and exclaim'd on by many violent opposers Neverthelesse it shall be here sought by due waies and means to reclaim and bring it from under the rubbish of gentilish and anarchicall principles into the Monarchy of pyrotechnall experience Yet would we not be mistaken to be thought for stiffe pleading for a confus'd abolishing of these things as the Rabble demolish Images in the zeale of their hammers oft violating the sepulchres of good men or rudely break up not go through open doors The Apollinian science then or art of Physick is every where brought upon the Stage and made the laughing-stock of the sick-brain'd vulgar because Physitians who have heterodogmatiz'd and deviated from the ancient beaten path of clear reason and experience put no distinction between the venerable grey-haires of ancient Physick and them who weare her honourable silver livery from the old scurff of Galen and his accomplices benighted to the clouds of ignorance and that Tatterdemalion Lanostema of Peripatetical Galenical predicaments of qualities whereby to heads of a larger size they seem to have put out their own eyes and willingly subject themselves like Mill-horses to grind in the Mill-house of custome and Tradition and aforehand to have stak'd themselves to a resolution to confine to the Custome of the Schools and sit down to a precise Conformity to lap up the prodigious vomits of Aristotle Galen and other illiterate Ethnicks and in effect to prescribe all the heads of the present age as Pupils to the dull and doting advisoes of the ancient precedent Paper-stuffers and then no lesse to say as in supernaturall things they are wont so in naturall to make it a kind of blasphemy at least presumption to step one haires breadth from the cry'd up and vulgar receiv'd way So hardly in good sooth can the dotage of those who dwell upon antiquity allow present times any share of wisdome or skill For we are not overbold to suppose what they read they beleeve and what they beleeve they leave to the confection of an Apothecary and family without any manuall or mechanick experiment For who among the formost of them can justifie their positions and rules by practise not by their hands but fancies Hence it is that every druggist and old woman with Mother Mid-night and of every occupation sally forth and dare to intrude themselves into the practise of Physick putting an affront upon Physitians because oftimes in many things they excell them For of old they are wont to reserve somethings to themselves as a pledge of their fame and family But after that the slothful and lazy disquisitions of Physitians prevail'd the itch of Gain turn'd Physick into a plow to make long furrow's on the backs of poor mortals by the just judgment of God all things went to wrack The Schools will have the shuffling and cutting of the Cards and the Colledge drawes the choice of physitians so that the whole pack of those that by them are accounted worthy are they who have subscrib'd to the ignorance and unskilfulnesse of Ethnicks that the Cathedrall of all reason learning skill Philosophy and all judgement might vail to them and they keep the keyes and mans life it selfe should be committed to them So that if he be but an Academick though a meer mammothrept and perhaps a Midas if they can but hide his two ambitious eares which they can easily doe by his implicite conformity he shall passe for Cathedrall Doctor a Physitian in folio with an imprimatur on his back as if he were the microcosmall Councell of State 's chief Physitian cum privilegio custod salutis populi so that upon the posts and frontispeice of the medicall conclave is written like that of Plato's Academy with a Nemo huc ingrediatur nisi c. Whereby all others are
we yet more detest the precipitations vitrifications and preparations of Mercury Antimony Tuty Sulphur c. And also the adulterations of Spirits from Aromaticks hot seeds of vitriol of sulphur c. For they are prepared for gain by our fugitive servants and furnish Apothecaries shops rather in comtempt of Chymistry then the defect of patients In like manner we deplore the shamefull simplicity of those who with great hope prescribe to patients those painted butter-flyes of leafe-gold and pounded Jewels selling their ignorance if not their fraud at agreat rate As if the stomack could thence expect the least help More suttle and therefore more to be condoled is the error of those who corrode gold silver Coral pearles and the like with soure liquors and thinke they dissolve them so that they will be easily admitted into the veins truly communicating their properties to us For they are ignorant alas ignorant that sourenesse is an enemy to the veins and therefore that the forreign sourenesse of the dissolvents being overcome and transmitted such metalls and stones are powder as before Which though it be brought into a most fine flower yet cannot the same be subdued by the stomack or impart its strength to us Which that it may be apparent to the sight poure salt of Tartar on the things dissolved in some pontick corrosive liquor and presently being dissolved it will fall to the bottome in form of powder For if aqua fortis change not metalls in the substance although those things become transparent that were before opacous nothing hinders but that silver may be thence again recovered With what blindnesse therefore do they prescribe stones and pearles as though by corrosives they left their former essence of stone or metall For it was the invention of a subtile deceiver that he might before his patients set a high rate on his potions Because ignorant deceivers think if the thing dissolving be not by the sight distinguished from the thing dissolved that the thing dissolved is truly and substantially transmuted They urge that pearls Corall c. are not dissolved in acid liquors but only as it were calcined by the salts of the things dissolving And this they prove by silver dissolv'd in Aq. fortis or regis which from thence is brought back again whole therefore hath not lost its pristine essence and this they wrest to the aforesaid stones and urge it because by the salt of the alkali of Tartar the same stone is again precipitated to the bottome which before was an invisible pouder forasmuch as the alcaal salt doth drink up the acetous salt which did contain in it self the pouder of the stones But they perceive not first of all that their own principles doe both teach and extoll dissolutions of this sort Then also that the stomack wants this salt of Tartar that she may precipitate the dissolved pouders and separate them from the thing dissolving and therefore they propose a ridiculous thing And by consequence that the matter of Pearls Corrall c. once dissolved after this manner remains dissolved and is admitted into the veins with the liquors of the Chyme and moreover is transmuted into urine or bloud and performes what is promised To which we subjoin an answer That Nature hath no need of the salt of Tartar to the separating of this pouder from the thing dissolving Because she is taught as well by meanes of the aliment received as of her own proper digestion to sequester this pouder For there are very many things amongst food which doe shew forth this effect Such as are pot-herbs and Vulnerary-herbs c. which for the most part have a lixiviall volatile salt Moreover the digestion it self of the stomack ordinarily doth transmute acid vegetable spirits substantially into a faline volatile salt of urine which when she may no longer enjoy her pristine power of dissolving which she at first had in acidity by and by she relinquisheth that is precipitates the pouder which before she had dissolved under her own acidity and therefore before the mouths of the mesaraick veins doth precipitate and cast off the aforesaid pouder But the Galenists goe on and urge saying that Bezoar-stones and Crabs-stones erroneously called Crabs-eyes c. as well taken in pouder as dissolved in some acid dissolving thing do notably help in the plague feavers stone wounded persons and bruised from on high Wherefore it savours of simplicity to deny the same in pearls Corrall c. To which we answer That Gemmes stones and things of a saxatile substance do differ much among themselves For first of all Gemmes flints marbles and whatsoever have a cristalline hardnesse do not at all act or suffer in us or by us unlesse per modum appensi periapti and that but a little while only untill they passe from the mouth thorow the excrements Very languid therefore is the vertue of these because it lies hid and shut up in too dense a body But pearls and Corrall and whatsoever else hath a saxatile hardnesse of shell-fish must give place truly to gemmes for hardnesse and yet they are not therefore digested in the Athanâ—r of our Oeconomy so well as in the stomack of some birds But the stones of Bezoar and of Crabs c. not so hard as pearls are not of a saxatile nature but are rather made of a lacteous semi-caseate semi-petrified juice and have a neutrall nature of a tophe between a Cartilage and a stone To this that hath been said for the better understanding of the truth we take leave to adde That though Bezoar stones and the stones of Crabs c. as touching the solid matter of their pouder are in no wise digested in the Balneum of our stomack although they carry in their breasts a lacteous and mucilaginouâ— juice of great vertue yet of an exiguous quantity such as happens to be drawn sorth also by the decoction of harts-horn rasped If therefore you boil the pouder of the aforesaid stone in rain or distilled water and streining the decoction by a filter you seperate it from the pouder this also draw off by distillation per Balneum you shall then find somewhat of the aforesaid muccilage But the rest of the pouder as it is not overcome by elixation so it continues in a permanency of indigestion in the stomack not to be subdued by charmes or won to the scepter of subjection neither by entreaties nor by the whole power of the Archeus And moreover from the smal quantity of the aforesaid liquor the reason's manifest why one dram of the aforesaid pouder of bezoar stone taken in some vehicle effects more then one scruple of the same Here it will not be impertinent nor beside the Cushion if we speak of not as falling foul upon it but taking in our way that scare-crow of imaginary and pannick fear of the numerous vulgar and pusillanimous Physitians concerning the dose or quantity to be taken at a time of Bezoar-stone We intend not
to make it our designe to beat down or make apocryphall the praecipitous opinion of the common people in their obstinate creed and implicite confidence in the goodnesse of this stone from the incredible number of them in this Countrey and in all Europe whereby it 's impossible that that countrey of India and but a spot of that neither can furnish so many Countreys by a thousand parts of these stones that is every where so common when it 's eported by those of the Countrey and by Authors of good esteem and credit That all the stones there must be brought to the King of that Countrey And Garcias ab Horto saies that it is very difficult to get any there whence seeing they are now so familiar and frequent among us and how it comes to passe and that we have any good is almost a miracle at least as rare as the white stone Mathiolus also in Libro epistolar tertio ad Quacelbenum saies That the stones the Emperour had were not good Vallesius again a learned and chief Physitian to Philip the second King of Spain in his fourth book beleeves the King himself had not nor in all Spain was not a true stone Moreover the Physitians themselves of that Countrey confesse that these stones are very rare and besides are so dear that they are kept very precisely by the Indians themselves for their own proper use We dare believe that above the hundred part of these Bezoar-stones so called are sorged and sophisticate such a cunning cast of suttle and deceiving merchants are there here in England after the Italian mode who can so exactly counterfeit them that themselves cannot know the one from the other the true from the false but by a certain eminent signe of notifying them Josephus Acosta in lib. 4. cap. 42. confesses that the simple Indians themselves know very well to adulterate them and do it with a wonderfull accurate artifice and very frequently and no wonder nor unlike to verifimility when this cousenage is wont to happen very often in medicines of a lesser price Lastly upon sure grounds we know that there is not much to be trusted to this stone because they do not answer to those effects written of by Authors For they will have it to move sweat powerfully and sometimes vomit sometimes as alexipharmacall and again as Cardiacall and therefore fly to it as to the last refuge as to the Anchora spei and Sanctuary of life But alas poor ignorant deluded vulgar who will rather snore in the lethargy of their stupid ignorance then awake to the disquisition of Truth They erre first in their too good opinion of this stone Secondly in their too great ignorance of the quality of it And thirdly in their too little knowledge of the quantity Which last is greatly feared among the common people and the same is evident from the Physitians prescriptions We will suppose now we have the true genuine Bezoar stone because the wild beliefe of the wilderness'd vulgar runs a madding after this stone more then seeking to be baptized with the new name or have the Evangelicall illegible stone The most are wont to fear the quantity of it thinking it to be a most hot medicine and powerfully vigorous and therefore dare not exceed above four or five grains at most Seeing it causes large sweat Now sudorificks seem to be begotten under the torrid Zone to be hot because they attenuate and cut the Line of humours and expell them out of the Center of the body unto the confines bordering upon the Territories of the Epidermis by the Nilus of profuse sweat that rills through the creeks of the Pelt the pores But first it is to be noted that at this day we seldome find Beâ—oar-stone to be the Mid-wife of evill humours or impregnated with a vertue to deliver and purge the body of vitious excrements by the menstruum of sweat as daily experience testifies Secondly that whosoever takes this stone in the maximity or greatest quantity of it shall not therefore perceive himself to be e're the hotter which every sound man may bring to the Test of experience in himself Thirdly they who have written hitherto oâ— this stone have sailed and coasted into the furthest parts of the knowledge of it have steer'd by the compasse or Lant-skip only of others petragraphy and description Some calculate and will have it to dwell under the temperate Zone Others under the frigid But no man who hath travelled into the Indies or America of its qualities and vertues by the fixed North-pole of experience will say that it is an inhabitant under the suÌ„mer solstice or more hotter Zone but is a naked substance living in the Autumne or wildernesse of insipidity having no elevation of either of those two poles of odour or sapour in it which is a wonder that for all this it should attain to the meridian of that degree of heat as is computed and ascribed to it whereby it 's feared as a Harry-Cain least the deluge of sweat it may procure by its hot sudorifick quality might drown and wash away our vitall powers Therefore they get into the Arke of a small dose or quantity and save themselves But it is more nigh unto the Israel of verisimility that it acts by an occult and not manifest property namely Corroborating and fortifying the Canaan of the Heart against the Aegyptian Garlick and onyons of malignant powers whence we may infer by the way That the militia of this stone is uselesse and unprofitable to draw a Line of fortification about the breast-works of the heart except there be an hostile incursion and invasion of malignant distempers to settle the barbarous tyranny of evill and venemous humours to subvert and overthrow the actions and powers of the Common-Wealth of our vitalls And so although it may do no harm yet to be sure it doth no good and is administred in vain Fourthly They who write of this stone do not agree in the latitude degree or dose of it For as in their petragraphicall character of the qualities of it they make many a voyage wide of the Aequator and beyond the line of Truth so in their description of its dimensions or quantity they come short of it and at the Lands-end fall foul and split upon the sands of a small and common dose of three or four grains But Mathiolus prescribes at least seven grains Garcius ab Horto unto thirty grains and confesses that more may be taken without hurt And we verily beleeve and from the premisses we before hinted do affirm that one main reason why this stone is so little effectuall is because it is taken in too small a quantity And it is recorded that to Edward the Confessour was given a dram weight at one time of this stone in pouder which is sixty grains Fumanellus also commends a dram of it to be given in the plague And certainly if the stone be innoxious a good quantity also
unavoidably become cadaverous Because they have tryed the heat of the place but are deprived of the true ferment of vitall digestion An old womans invention then is a nourishing â—â—yster and a laxative a cruel one Having now had a clear and uninterrupted prospect into the field of the vulgar medicines of the shops We now descend and take the chair on the stage of Topicks the scene of oiles and suets which are but mutes and of no value for ointments and plaisters Dramatis personae unlesse perhaps to give consistence the Epitasis of their action to the medicine and bring the heterogeneall parts into a chorus of mixture by their emplastick quality For first a great part of men suffer not ointments applyed to the skin because they excite itchings and whelks with swelling Next because the oiles aforesaid are for the most part made of herbs whose vertue lyeth hid in a mucilaginous and gummy juice but that juice by boiling is drawn out into the porridge or wrung out by the presse which is not truly combined with the oiles but at length being fix'd groweth hard But we collect the balsomes of flowers more rightly in honey And we much more admit the simplicities of simple then of compound oiles Wherefore we chiefly explode the unmeet and absurd compositions of unguents and plaisters sold in shops in that nothing is more foolish then that the pouder of vegetables under divers suets and fats ignorantly mixt should by being fix'd harden and so become good for nothing Which if it be minerall will not mingle with the fat but is rather so drowned therein and imprisoned that it is worth nothing and oneiy encreaseth the weight For nothing is to be mingled with oiles ointments and plaisters which cannot in them be wholly homogeneously resolved It is also worthy of laughter that the most white sugar is commended not because it is sweeter and in its vigor more worthy but because it is dearer and oftentimes hath been boiled with a lixivium of unslaked lime Where the very name of purity hath made the cheat The contused flowers of herbs c. being mingled with the whitest sugar grow dull which by meanes of sweeter sugar contract a ferment and by heating draw out the powers of the simple But afterwards by the enclosed digestion of the heat the ferment is checked and they become more powerfull by far But the diversity of the ferment dependeth on the lixivium which one sugar hath and another wanteth We are likewise wont outwardly to apply ointment with choise For in such maladies whose cure proceedeth from the center outwards as in wounds contusions combustions c. We advise that they be applyed warm but where the inward malady requires outward help as the dysentery Colick or nephritick Convulsions schirrhus c. ointments should be cherished from without with a stone heat or with hot sand And we have learned by viewing Chaffe in a kettle of warm water walking to and fro as it were from the heat kindled underneath and therefore that by a powerfull heat ointments applyed are quickned and join their spirit with our bloud We first guessed and after found by experience that the maladie is by this meanes drawn out and the violence of the Symptomes staid And whatsoever Baths do in the whole the same is done in part without prejudice of the whole by ointments being heat and cherished For a fomenting tile drives the smell of the plaister inwards and draweth out those things which otherwise do stick more closely In like manner the spirit inforcing it self is drawn together with the bloud and is dispersed with heat another succeeding in its place exhausts the force of the medicine and as it were boiling within is reverberated Likewise about the gathering of simples it is not Certainly agreed upon They conclude that roots are to be gathered about Autumne But for the most part simples afford the more powerfull roots at spring The Polypodium of the spring is chiefly green and flâ—urishing In the Autumne it exhibits a hoary and black root being worn out and uselesse We conceive that each is to be gathered immediately before the state of maturity for full maturity is the begining of declination Wherefore let each fruit flower root leafe barke c. have its determinate space of maturity for even the juice in plants first floweth up which in many afterwards dryeth up or is consumed and spent into leafes so that the varietie of maturities begetteth variety of gatherings For thus some leafes after the flowers are more vegetous but others are more juycie before them There are also others which are stronger before the growth of the fruit and there are others that perpetually persist Wherefore they more rightly determine who gather simples according to the exigency of their scope and designe Hitherto hath my employment been to make us men and to bring us from under the fraud Errors Ignorance and other rubbish of that which the folly and vanity of the Schools have falsly called a Science and Art what art I pray you Except the art to cloak their defects and Ignorance with impostures and only palliate diseases and that as beastly as can be wished For as the case stands they have made of a lovely beautifull and bountifull virgin an ill favour'd penurious Harlot dress'd and trick'd up with Gew-gaw's with whom the whole Europaean world hath committed most abominable fornication We will now wade lightly over and that with a dry foot this shallow brook of simple distill'd waters of the Apothecaries in the common leaden stills and hope with the Torrent of current truth and rational deductions to rince away this into the common-shoare of errors and with the Index expurgatorius of acute demonstrations to wipe it out of the journall-book of Physick How great and meridian light is come unto Physick onely by true distillation as it is us'd of all men so it is known but of a few and daily experience teacheth how great commodity hath redounded thereby unto the sick so that by it hath more glory and renown been reflected on Physick and more additions made and perfections acquir'd then by all the whole rabble of Galenicall and heathenish traditions We shall not stand to shew whence the word distillation is deriv'd let it be their tendance who have the Art to be industriously idle nor the manner of distillation or what instruments serving thereunto nor how many sorts of distillation as per Ascensum Descensum latus or how many waies as per Balneum Mariae per Cineres per arenam per campanam per patinam it being besides my purpose and requires a peculiar Tractate But it shall be here sought whether that product by the vulgar and rustick distillation of Apothecaries in the common leaden stills be any other then an insipid aequeous humour frighted out of the whole meerly by the violence of the fire without the Counter-magick of the still or instrument for that purpose without any