proportion of Knowledge diffused by degrees upon every Age that viz. none may unjustly upbraid the other of ignorance Truly we have lost by the great changes of humane Affairs very many things which might perpetuate the Memory of some former Age. Neither are there wanting in the present Age whatever th' envious may deny Discoveries that deserve the best Praises which shall Nobilitate the Art of Physick while an Art and hand it down so refined to be sacredly preserved by Posterity And now I shall give some Examples of Infants cured by this our method but not with that design that these my small and pitiful Endeavours should be preferred to all other more learned Methods for I cannot determine what others of better Judgment may do Thus only I do send unto the World and for its use such things as by my Experience are found to be really true or very near to the truth leaving always to others the same power of judging we have assumed to our self and which I doubt not may be of great use to some Observation I. A Very Noble Infant th' Eldest Son of the most Illustrious Lord Charles Marquess and Earl of Worcester a Man of an Infinite quickness of Spirit and very capable for the greatest Offices in the Kingdom whom all the Changes and Vicissitudes of Humane Affairs could never divert from his singular Integrity being of a very succulent and sanguine Habit of Body but whose Nerves were very weak and very often troubled with an Acute Fever but its Matter did most especially derive it self into his Lungs In the mean while his Lordship was affected with a grievous difficulty of Breathing which especially in his sleep was most sensible to By-standers A Paleness did seize his Beautiful Face Drought especially and violent and burning Heat of Skin with Tumbling and continual Disquiet did oppress him I let him Blood somewhat largely from his Arm and then most succesfully used that method which I have described whereby the Fever with all th' other Symptoms were defeated and Health restored But the first time that I visited that Noble Infant was upon the 14th of June 1685. when he was 14 months old But he was much weakned by a Chin-Cough at that time when he was first committed to my care Doctor Short a most Excellent Physitian being call'd to my Assistance And by our common Advice were taken four Ounces of Blood from his Right Arm Truly I did propose a more liberal use of Pearls and such things which allay too much Acidity and in the mean while a spoonful of the Juice of Pennyroyal sweetned with Sugar Candy to be given twice or thrice in one day and every third day to be gently purged with Manna to which method as both the most safe and as approved by me upon other occasions this Gentleman of singular Sincerity and excelling not only in the knowledge of his Profession but also in his good Humor did easily assent And so that most Noble Infant next Heir after his Father to the most Splendid and August next to the Royal Family of the Duke of Beaufort recovered Health as I did publickly foretell at that time in ten days time who in the Opinion of the other most famous Physitian seem'd not possible to be cured in the space of three Months Moreover by the Blessing of God I did restore to former Health the same most Noble Infant now five Years old when sick of a continued Fever and chiefly complaining of his Head and Belly by course but next being tormented with most violent Gripes upon the Region of the Ilium so that they were very like to the Iliack-Passion with a very weak Pulse But we must observe that when this was changed from a most Acute and Continued into a most safe Intermitting Fever whose Paroxysm had not its beginning with shivering and cold as ordinarily but with a dry Cough which lasted the whole Fit and which recurred every day after Dinner I resolved to try the Virtue of the Jesuites-Powder But all its advantage was fleeting and merely palliative until some drops of Blood forced from his Nose by the strength of the Fever and violence of the Cough did encourage me who before was a little Refractory because his natural strength was much exhausted by the Disease to take at least six Ounces of Blood at his Arm and to purge him next day After which a strengthning Julep designed for carrying off the Remains of his Cough did so perfectly cure that weak Infant that daily he became more healthy until he arrived at its Perfection which he enjoyeth at this time Observation II. I Did treat after the same manner the same Marquess his Daughter Lady Elizabeth a Girl eleven months old being of a plump and thick Habit of Body seized in the beginning of the Spring but a very cold Season with an Acute Fever and a Cough almost Convulsive and did reduce her to perfect Health in almost as short time considering both Seasons of the Year I only added about the end some Drops of Sweet Elixir Proprietatis to these Powders Observation III. THe only Son of the Earl of Pembroke a Noble-Man not only well endued with the ancient Splendor of his Ancestors but with all excellent Gifts of mind being Seventeen Weeks old was troubled in the beginning of February with Colick-Pains Green Excrements Thrushes perpetual Disquiet and startling of his Limbs His Ears from which a certain Humour after the manner of Infants did flow iâ— great abundance were intirely dryed up Yet by the use of the mentioned Remedies he recovered in the space of six days â„ž of the compound Powder of Crabs Claws â„¥ i. of Pearls prepar'd ℈ ii of Sal-prunell ℈ i. M. and make a Powder to be divided in eight equal parts Let him have one immediately in a spoonful of the following Julep drinking another after all â„ž of the Alexiteriqus Milk Water â„¥ iv of Pennyroyal Water â„¥ ij of the compound Poeony Water â„¥ iij. of Pearled Sugar â„¥ i. M. and make a Julep Two days after the Illustrious Infant had taken the prescribed Powders for the allaying of his Pains with their designed Success I gave him the following solutive Syrup upon the third by which he was gently purged and put from the least suspition of Danger â„ž of the Syrup of Cichory with Rhubarb of purging Thorn ana Ê’j of the best Rhubarb in Powder gr â—ij of the Tincture of Saffron gut x. M. Thereafter I continued him the next two days with the Powders and I purged him upon the third as before After all these his Sickness did intirely vanish the lurid and pale Colour of his Face became vivid and sprightly and his Ears began to weep as before Observation IV. THe most Honourable Lady Catherine Daughter to the same most Illustrious Earl being three years and a half in Age was affected with a Lent Fever which had most irregular Paroxysms but she particularly complained of a grievous pain of her
An Exact ENQUIRY Into and Cure of the Acute Diseases OF INFANTS By Walter Harris M. D. Englished by W.C. M.S. With a Preface in Vindication of the Work LONDON Printed for Sam. Clement at the White Swan in St. Paul's Church-Yard 1693. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE Margaret Countess of Roxburgh c. MADAM THere 's none I can so safely come unto for Shelter to my first Labours as Your self in whose Nature Justice and Equity are so firmly established that your Name prefixed to this Book is not only able to defend it from Calumny but also to cover a great many Faults may be found in it If I should declare my Obligations to lay this Work at your Feet this Epistle would swell to a greater Bulk than the Book it self For who could enumerate all your Endowments or my own particular Ties in less space Who can sufficiently declare that profuseness of Nature who ordinarily giveth some Excellency to one some to another but has Concentrated all in You Who did ever see Nobility such a debonaire Countenance such exact and divine proportion of Body Politeness of Mind and Pleasantness in Conversation so blended and mixed in a Creature so that I 'm at a stand whether I should say That they are the Attendants of your Birth or much rather since they are not to be found in your Equals I could almost think that Nobility and Riches are but the Earnest of the Reward of so great Vertues Madam I am hardly restrain'd from breaking in upon Them but I fear I should wander in this vast Field and inextricable Labyrinth Wherefore I do truly value my self that I have resisted so great a Temptation in not launching out into this Ocean in improving the Subject before me in Panegyrick Yet I cannot so entirely moderate my Passion but I must say That the great Prudence whereby you have managed and improved That Estate in the Minority of your most Noble Son is a most plain Declaration of the most of the other Vertues But that I may not offend against your Modesty I must keep off and tell you in short That this Dedication is the Basket of Flowers the poor Man presenteth his Rich Neighbour with Yet worthless things receive a value when they are made the Offerings of Respect Esteem and Gratitude These I have in the highest degree for You so that if they can add a Price to what they go along with proportionable to their own Greatness I can with confidence brag I here make your Ladyship the greatest Present you ever received This I am sure I am under the greatest obligation to seek all occasions to acknowledge and I should be most Ungrateful if I did not lay hold on this Opportunity to testify to the World how much I am obliged to be MADAM Your Ladyships most humble and most obedient Servant WILLIAM COCKBURN THE EPISTLE TO THE READER Reader I Here present you with a Translatition of the best if not the first and only Book yet extant upon the Subject which however rational is rejected by a great many otherways Learned Physitians as Empyrical Neither is that strange Humour of decrying what we do not use stayed there but the malice of some has led them into a great many Personal Reflections upon the Learned Author himself as a most unlearned Innovator This imputation of Novelty is a terrible Charge amongst those who judge of Mens Heads as they do of their Perukes by the fashion and can allow none to be right but the receiv'd Doctrines Truth scarce yet carried it by Vote any where at its first appearance new Opinions are always suspected and usually opposed without any other reason but because they are not already common and its Detectors disclaimed against as the greatest Enemies of Mankind This way of Calumniating is no newer than the World it self This has been the Fate of such as have deserved best in all Ages and never more evident than in the last for tho' there have been a great many things discovered in it so essential and necessary for the use of Medicine that it may be a wonder how it had subsisted before that time yet were not the English Oracles Harvey viz. Willis Lower Sydenham c. freed from the Scourge of an unruly Tongue and Pens dipt in blackest Satyr So we may the less admire that Libels as unjust are brought against this first tho' most exact Essay of curing Infants Diseases As the Trial and Examination of Truth and not any Antick Fashion must give it price though it be not yet current by the Publick Stamp So shall this Treatise be found intirely rational if they will but adjust it to their own Rule For are not there here Causes Procatartick Antecedent and Immediate described from the surest Considerations Has not he begun with Reflections upon the first Motion in the Ovum and observed the Nature and Constitution of its very Spring Neither has he left in disguise but clearly demonstrated what external Injuries they can sustain yea he hath most accuratly enquired into the Nature of their Fabrick and Body it self and hath deduced all the Maladies that can be subsequent thereupon from the most solid and firm Principles of the best Philosophy And therefore that Calumny is most malicious when they traduce him as a Rejecter of the use of Philosophy h. e. best informed Reason in Medicine and that he should teach how to become Physitians by practising This indeed is the way of some impudent Murtherers yet all that he says is That Practice is the Standard of our right Reasonings while in the mean time he doth very well know it to be simply impossible that one just Observation can be made when the understanding is not sufficiently polished by necessary Philosophy Experience being very deceitful So when in several places of his Book he doth inveigh against and declare the uselesness of that which was ordinarily brought for the Introducing and handing in of Medicine he doth positively speak of those which are fitted to the frisking Spirits of Young Men but which never had place but in the Brains of their Inventers Yea he doth almost in plain Terms assort what that is he thinketh absolutely requisite for polishing and preparing the Minds of Men for becoming faithful observers of the Effects of Natural Operations by the several Appeals he doth make through the whole book unto Experiment As if he had most plainly declared the great use of the Experimental Philosophy for explaining Phaenomena's in Medicine which methinks should be no hard task to prove if the Ingenious and immortal Mr. Boyl had loft any thing debatable upon this subject and the world were not utterly satisfied of the great advances Philosophy hath made in that School more than in any other Whatever be the truth of this It is most certain that the contrivers of these fanciful Philosophies have got their Vnderstanding and knowledge this way whatever be the dress they have put theirs into This might
much affrightned at the very naming and mentioning of Purging as the Foolish Nurses Neither am I ignorant that some Authors have had long Disputes about Purging in Feavers as almost in all other Diseases but if I may speak my mind in few words they have rather designed with many words to fill up volumes to amuse the Minds of their Readers and to shew their great Learning than ei the to illustrate or determine the Truth Sydenham the great Ornament and Blazing Star of this Age having a more than ordinary Masculine Spirit and a most sublime Understanding hath made good h. e. hath more fully compleated by his Practice and manifold Reasonings that Affair in which the other Authors have truly cheated and couzen'd the World The preparation of Humours by Alexipharmacks and Sudorificks in Fevers did more further their Crudity than Concoction Truly if at any rate they must be said to prepare yet no other thing but an untimely Death while they do most certainly procure Frenzies Convulsions and a great many most deplorable Symptoms by forcing up these Crudities from the lowest parts of the Body into the Head If in the beginning of Feavers whether they be Essential or Symptomatick we shall delay and put off till to morrow these necessary Evacuations in the expectation of the lingring Concoction how soon doth that too irrrevocable and golden opportunity pass away The only time wherein the beginning of the ensuing Cure was to be made wherein there was sufficient strength and in which alone there can be advantage by Evacuations yet is spent in the Administration of Cordials and the vain and uncertain trial of the Fever-vanquishing Medicaments of the Chymists and the Patient just now strong endeth his days furious and mad Moreover I assert that notwithstanding the blind prejudice of men Evacuations duly made do more reduce crude Urine to their desired Concoction and the Patient unto his Health than any thing yet known to man The preparation then of which I speak is not to be essayed with sweating Medicaments properly so called h. e. such as warm the Body which upon no account are agreeable with tender Infants or Children but on the contrary are most hurtful Sith the most temperate things shall most securely absorbe the prevailing Acidity by little and little they mitigate Ebullitions and become the most safe and powerful Anodynes These are Crabs Eyes and Claws Oyster shells of Wilks Cuttle-bone Egg-shells Chalk Coral Coraline Pearls the Mother of Pearls both the Bezoars burn'd Harts-horn burn'd Ivory the Bone of a Hart's-heart the Shavings of Hart-horn of the Unicorn's-horn Bole Armenick sealed Earth Blood-stone c. Among the Compounds the Powder of Crabs Claws compounded the Goack-stone and the Powders for making the Confection of Hyacinth take place Before all I must observe lest the most necessary liberality of Physicians toward the poor should be interrupted that these precious Medicaments brought from afar out of the Indies for as much as I could observe have no more pleasant and benign effect than those of a lesser value and which the wise Providence of God hath abundantly supplyed for the manifold uses of mankind And therefore I cannot recommend the Magisteries of any precious Stone however they be praised by a great many Surely they have changed their whatever native Power into such as is very Foreign And which before were most convenient for absorbing the Acid but being now neither sweet nor sour are only made useless by too curious Art Of design have I not mention'd the boasting Accounts of Volatile Salts whether they be Spirituous or Oleous not of the Bezoard Mineral lunar or solar nor of the Spirit of Sal-armoniack or Hart's-horn yet the use of these Spirits is not to be intirely laid aside even for these young ones Because they do excellently absorb Acidity but are most dexterously to be administred because of the great Heat that attendeth them Upon this score your lixivial Salts the hot Cordial Waters as the Compound-Paeony-Water the Plague-Water Aqua Coelestis Mirabilis the strong Cinnamon-Water and the like do fall much short of their wonted Fame unless they be mixed with others that are more temperate in so very small a Quantity that their burning Heat doth become altogether unperceptible to the Taste For these Medicaments that overheat the Body whatever be their Fame or Inestimable Value though they should most impudently promise immortality it self yet will they easily consume the Bodies of young ones and by degrees disperse their natural Heat or turn it to that which is Feaverish and lastly become as useless for that tender Age as Milk and Panadoe for quieting the craving Stomach of a Ploughman For which Reasons Galen did most straitly bar Children from the use of his Treacle however justly prepar'd which tho' he so highly esteemed that he thought it an All-heal and Universal Remedy That the foregoing temperate Powders do absorbe Acidity is a thing so well known that it doth need no proof And that they are the most safe most certain and never-failing Anodynes in the Gripes of Children shall be evinced by giving them in a more liberal than the ordinary Dose h. e. in a sufficient quantity for attaining the designed end Moreover I do boldly assert that the mentioned Powders dexterously administred do with the same certainty that we know that the effects of Rhubarb are purgative allay and assuage all the Pain and Disquiet of Infants from whatever Cause except there be no hope lest from whatever Remedies because of some great Defect of the chief parts If in any violent Inflammation we should let six Ounces of Blood and if twenty at least were requisite why should we accuse Blood-letting as useless in that Disease when the too spare Administration of that Remedy is only to be blamed Likewise if one or two Ounces of the foregoing Powders were requisite for the allaying of these paint wherewith Infants are affected what great success could we expect from the imperfect use of one or two Drams when at the same time in Ounce is necessary An exact knowledge of Medicaments is the slenderest if not the meanest accomplishment of a good and skilful Physitian The right use of Medicaments for satisfying the designs of curing the adjusting both the kind and quantity of Medicaments to the particular Constitution of the Patient from a quaint Reflection upon the nature of the present Disease the exquisite knowledg of the Constitution especially of people of full Age h. e. whether it be Sanguine or Melancholick and whether the Feaver doth mostly affect the Blood or whether Spirits be wanting and their strength weakned by that bustle and trouble and lastly the right knowledge of appointing Diet are all more requisite to make a good Physician than the most numerous Provision of Medicinal Receipts whence ever Collected And if that be not true the Apothecary being most Learned in Receipts will easily excel the most Learned Physician and his pratling Servant be
half the quantity of the Mass whose genuine and natural vertue is lost by the fire or if not it cannot surely enough be determin'd what its strength is which may be said of a great many other Preparations made by Fire I prefer this way of preparing it to all other both because tho given in however so great a quantity and however often it never exciteth Salivation which cannot be convenient for that tender Age and is most formible to by-standers as also because it is made up after a simple and natural way without any help from too too curious Art which putteth no value upon any Medicaments but such as have passed the Fire that thereby they may become purer and more freed from their I know not what natural filth when tho they are very often changed from their best state and their excellent natural Vertues into such as are worse more unsafe and intirely new But also the undaunted Volatility of Mercury which hath cost Chymists so much labour in Fixing it is very easily subdued by the small work of the Pistil and Mortar I might adduce a great many more Examples if I could discreetly incroach upon the patience of my Reader by dwelling longer upon the same thing I might renew and deservedly approve of that good and old custom of easily preventing a great many Diseases of Infants and Children by safe and known Remedies which do much resist the corrupting of Humours and were given every month Seeing viz. the most tender nature of Infants is most subject to all impressions as well external as internal and seeing Crudities and Indigestion do so abound with these tender ones a prudent Physician should correct and amend these Dispositions and Diseases which cannot be altogether removed in so delicate and weak a Constitution I could at length debate whether it were safer that new-born Infaents should rashly be resigned as is customary to the care of a Hired Nurse that Parents viz. at the last may hear of the great hazard of their Infants when they have already ended their innocent life through the carelesness and fault of Nurses or whether they should rather be weaned when first born whether mothers themselves should become nurses or lastly whether the nurse when necessity doth require one should be maintained at the Mother's Houses and by their care be diligently kept up from the Embraces of her Husband But it is now high time to remove an Objection as well of some Physicians which are happy Practitioners as of all those who have most diligently enquired into the nature of simples for the use of Physick they sc will blame my Method as too simple and not equipped with things commonly known and much wanting that Variety of Prescriptions which is so very requisite for a learned Physician and which often over aboundeth amongst Authors yea they will accuse me that I am either altogether ignorant of or have unjustly slighted the Chymical Preparations long ago commended in the Works of almost all the Authors Let them then remember that a Physitian is the Servant of Nature and that Nature cureth Diseases Let them complain that they came naked into the World that Nature is content with a few things and that Art should imitate or rather adumbrate Nature as much as is possible They may know that I think him who prescribeth too long or too many Forms of Remedies to offend through Ignorance or deceit And as to Chymistry I do more endeavour to understand it than to lay any great stress upon its Promises I shall not mention hong long I lodged with the most Famous Lemery the great Honour and Ornament of the Spagyrick Art and of this Age as to Chymistry in his House at Paris And if Physick not very much abounded with genuine and natural Ways of curing when Chymistry not long ago pretended to the chief place in Medicine I doubt it would have afterward swoln so much with Chymical Preparations For what end should Physitians have betaken themselves unto unknown unsure and most dangerous things even those Sanctuaries of Ignorance unless that some notable jealousie had arisen from things so well known and tried by many Surely they had not snatch'd so greedily at the Shadow forsaking the substance if no Charm had appeared in the trembling Light But I would not rashly despise Chymistry as confined within the bounds of Pharmacy neither would I have any to extol it un awares as diffused beyond the limits of Physick It is very observable in how great Poverty these great favourers of Chymical Preparations and the zealous Enemies of the old way of curing that I may say nothing of the comon Chymists Quacks who adulterate every thing and make great promises without performance if you except very few do live though they do not doubt to promise Golden Mountains as people speak to the too credulous ignorant and covetous But though it be true that Riches and Power are not given to wise and knowing Men and such as are best skilled in every Trade conform to their Demerit yet I think it most probable that Their great Poverty hath most its rise from the hurt and great Bane of their Medicaments or famous secrets that a great many of them because of their destructive partaking or incorporating with the Fire are most unuseful for if not altogether contrary to the Health of Mankind For if for the most part they were of any use for Men or if their strength were answerable to their promises altho they could not enrich this or the other Chymist yet it s most sedulous Artificers even as an ordinary gain doth always attend the great part of all other careful Tradesmen who make profession of any thing for public use could not be so frequently frustrated in their hopes of getting Riches If I intended to advise my dearest Son what method he should take to scrape together a great abundance or at least a sufficient Portion of Money by my perswasion he should be of great integrity of life that he should circumveen no man deceitfully neither that he should take pains in coyning Lyes whatever kind of Life or whatsoever sort of Trade he did designedly lead for encreasing Riches And I would no less inculcate to him that this is of all the best way to live in miserable Poverty however the cozenings of some Crafty Knaves who have long practised falshood may succeed for some time not to perfidiously over-reach others to tell lies for truth and at any rate to act the part of a wicked Impostor or unthrifty Man But that we may return to Chymical Preparations I cannot but esteem the Works of Nature far more excellent than those of Art yea with Galen that they are greater and do exceed all Commendation however they be despised by some and Nature her self accused as unactive by Epicurus Wherefore our most divine Old Man doth justly say 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That Medicine is best practised according to the prescript of Nature But that we may come to a close I would not have such as do so much esteem and are delighted with the Art we speak of still ignorant that scarce any Chymical Preparations as its true Sons if there be any such have often complained to my self are to be sold at this time which are not fictitious and adulterated upon the base account of Gain Lastly some may object that Blood-letting can never be convenient for that tender Age much less to become necessary upon some occasions I reply that Blooding even of the Youngest Infants was appointed of old by the command of the Supream God the Greatest Physitian in the Decree of the Circumcision that great Hemorrhagies did often attend it and which were very difficultly stopped unless by exquisite Remedies prepared for that end and yet the Jewish Writers which is very observable did boldly aver That not one Infant of a thousand was a-missing or died untimely only because that Blood was let this way May the greatest and best God from whom as from an unexhaustible Fountain every good and propitious thing doth flow upon whose favour the happy Success of the Art of Physick more than any other doth continually depend countenance with his wonted Goodness these things which I have written with a sincere Mind that they may tend to the Publick which is always to be prefer'd to any private advantage FINIS
most easily be demonstrated from the great use Aristotle made of the Works of his Ancestors especially of those of Ocellus Lucanus though he handed them down unto Posterity as his own So he and his Followers in this Reformation fixing their Thoughts only on Words and the end of their Contemplations and Reasonings about little more than Sounds the result of all was nothing but Noise and wrangling about Sounds without convincing or bettering a Man's Vnderstanding Which the Ingenious and most Famous Des Cartes has exercised in great measure and stoutly asserted our liberty in Disquisition against that Tyrant of Men's Minds for which no Generation shall ever mention him without due Praise Yet his Followers have very much endeavoured to bring the World back into that Slavery and Bondage their Master had but lately freed it from whilst they set up a clear Deduction of all Truths from their Masters Principle as if all that boundless Extent were the natural and undoubted Possession of their Vnderstandings wherein there is nothing exempted from its Decision or that escapes its Comprehension They do not remember how much their Master was and they are obliged to Experimental Philosophy His Meditations are a new dress of the most Learned Lord Verulam his Novum Organum being his Dubitation is to be read in the 31st Aphor. of that Book where he saith That a Redress is to be made from the first Foundations because as he saith in the distribution of that Work there is a twofold fault of our Senses they sc either altogether forsake or deceive us for there are a great many things which our Senses c. His Prejudices were before that time termed Idols by the Learned Bacon and the Advice of fixing upon some general Truth by which we may more clearly make Disquisition into her more retired Recesses given by that most ingenious Gentleman who tho well knowing the Infinity of such Maxims upon the ground of Assent at first hearing and understanding the Terms yet could never suspect that any could carry the Matter so high as to fix upon any one as the first neither is the Proof of Existence because of Thought at all such except we also know the necessity and relation of Thinking and Being which he perhaps had cleared if he had not been afraid of falling into that other general Truth and innate Idea if there be any such that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be This then being the whole Life and Spring of his Meditations we may most justly say That they are nothing else but Sir Francis Bacon reviv'd And that his natural Philosophy is nothing but a dexterous Application of his ingenious Principles to the common and observed Operations of Nature will be most clear if we do recollect where in the Fourth Book of his Principles of Philosophy being now destitute and run out in his own Learning he doth ingenuously confess That he can assert nothing positively of these Phaenomena's not having had sufficient Trial and Experiment And as the Ancients did cast such things as they could not explain by their beloved Four Qualities into that vast Catalogue of such as are Occult so the ingenious Des Cartes did dispatch a great many Difficulties with his as unconceivable Dispositions and certain ways of Doing Neither has Aristotle and his Followers been more diligent in suppressing those Ancient Philosophers that as the most Learned Lord Verulam saith in the 282 p. of his 3d. Book about the encrease of Sciences After the fashion of the Ottoman Family they thought they could not safely Reign unless their Brethren were Assassinated than the Followers of that Famous Man to suppress contrary perhaps to their Master's first Design every way of explaining Phaenomena's but their own This Contagion stoppeth not here but has diffused it self so much into Medicine that now there can be no Learned Physitian but who doth reason his Diseases from these three Principles h. e. from the different Efforts and Operations of the Matter of the first Globules of the second and that of the third Element But whether my most Learned Author has just reason to subscribe to those or keep by his own Philosophy shall appear from the following Considerations As 1. From this useless and general way of explaining Phaenomena's wherein there 's nothing to be found but empty Sounds and most abstract Notions They call all Diseases a Confused or ill mixture of the Humours which in the main is true but how to settle the different kinds of Diseases is somewhat hard and their Cause an obstruction of Pores and so with them must always be thrust out by Diaphoretick and Sweating Medicines And so there is never any use for cooling and temperate Medicaments these silly and naughty parts of the Creation which are ordain'd without any Design and are of no use to Man as the standard of our Religion would inform us So either there must be no such thing in nature as these Remedies or the Scriptures do cheat us when they inform us That all on this Earth was created for the use of Man Yea it might much be doubted that I may pursue their fancy whither the parts of Matter arrested by Pores of a different Figure these Causes of Obstructions are to be driven Surely not outward lest they produce a too great extension of Fibres and so communicate Irregular Motions unto their beloved Glandula and so create some grievous Perception in the Soul h. e. Pain Neither inward being they have not yet seen the necessity for these Wedges to force their Return which else they could easily have supplied us with But to the purpose 2. From the bad Success their greatest Authors have had in practice not to name any being it is well known to any that have been in their Country yea whatever Parade they make in their Theory their Practice is nothing different from that of the Ancients and their Prescriptions are most implicitely transcribed yea sometime when they do flatly oppose those Views they established from their Theory 3. From the small Progress Physick has made under its Conquest For what Advances have they made merely or for the most part by their Philosophy Is not the spacious Field of the Materia Medica the same for them as it was left by Dioscorides and Bauhinus though the Rise and Beginning of this Philosophy has been in a time when the great Secrets in Anatomy have been disclosed which some most ridiculously apply to the great Advantages that have accrued to the World by this as if it had been the Clew of Ariadne that led into the vast Labyrinth of Anatomy and of a great many more that did then appear by the diligent scrutiny of Men at that time So that he may say of Medicine considering its growth under the Cartesian or other fanciful Philosophy what the Learned Verulam said upon another occasion of the Mechanicks in his days That they were come to a greater heighth