THE ART OF Curing Diseases BY Expectation: With Remarks on a supposed great Case of Apoplectic Fits. Also most useful Observations on Coughs, Consumptions, Stone, Dropsies, Fevers, and Small Pox; with a Confutation of Dispensatories, and other various Discourses in Physic. By Gidean Harvey; M. D. their Majesty's Physician of the Tower, and Fellow of the College of Physicians of the Hague.  
LONDON, Printed for james Partridge at the Posthouse between Charing-Cross and Whitehall. 1689.   

To the Right Honourable my Lord Marquis of Hallifax, Lord Privy Seal, and Speaker to the House of Lords.  
IF annual Oblations from Gratitude were celebrated by the Ancients to those, that had been somewhat extraordinary serviceable to the Public, a perpetual Anniversary is more justly due to your Lordship's most successful Endeavours, and Zele for the Laws, Liberties, and the Protestant Religion; wherefore may I among the rest make humble offering of these my little Labours to your Lordship's Immortal Name, as a grateful Testimony that I am.  
Your Lordship's Most submissive and most obedient Servant Harvey.   
THE Art of Curing Diseases BY EXPECTATION.  

CHAP. I.  
Containing the Description of the Art of Expectation.  
1. IF Antiquity be capable of conferring Validity, the Art of Expectation being contemporary with that of Physic, may be termed equally valuable. In many cases they are synonymous, where the Cure is attributed to the Art of Medicine, which in reality was chief performed by the Art of Expectation; the Remidies, that were the Tools of the former, being of little or no efficacy, and consequently delusory; whereas Time, Delays, and doing nothing, are the principal media of the latter. Hence may easily be apprehended, what is meant by curing Diseases by Expectation, viz. The applying of Remedies, that do little hurt, and less good, from which the Patiented day by day frustraneously epecting relief, and benefit, is at last deferred so long, that Nature, and Time have partially, or entirely, cured the Disease, which notwithstanding the Physician by subtlety, cunning, and officiousness, doth commonly with success insinuate, that the Patient is Debtor for his Life, and recovery, to the Doctor's Skill, Judgement, Method, and Remedies; and in this particular, the wisest of men do become half Fools, by intrusting their Lives, and yielding obedience to most Physicians, of whom, or their Art, they are incapable of judging, by reason of their being unacquainted with the inside of their Persons, and the vanities of their Profession.  
2. Suppose yourself cured of an Ague, Catarrh, Sickness of Stomach, or twenty other Distempers, by taking twice or thrice a day, horis medicis, for ten days together, five grains of Tobacco-pipe powder, (which by a reputed honest, and most Learned Physician, shall be hinted to be Magistery of Pearl) or by swallowing down, in the same Medicinal Method, five grains of Terra damnata Vitrioli, or powder of a well-burnt Earthen Pipkin, intimated to be prepared Gold. This probably hath cost you six or eight pounds. You are now certainly restored (tuto, cito, & jucunde) to your health, and all is well. Be you never so rich, so great, or so wise a man, will not your own judgement convince you of folly beyond Idiotism, in having made in the preceding case a Physician your Trustee, and giving credit to his pretended Cure, which is no other, than was effected by the Art of Expectation, in manner following? From the first Dose of Powder you perceived no benefit, though you were willing to be persuaded, that what advancement was made towards recovery, was insensible, and therefore you were contented, to expect five or six days for a sensible abatement, and so the die in diem, until in good truth it was your abstinence from Flesh, and strong Liqours, gave your Spirit's leisure and opportunity, to digest, separate, and expel those morbific Humours.  
3. That this is so, is apparent in poor men, whose straightness of Fortune not permitting, to make application to Doctors or Apothecaries, by fasting, and keeping themselves from the injuries of the Air, are cured of slight Distempers, that are curable by Nature, and the Art of Expectation, in the same space of time the Doctors do require, to set up the rich. As for great Diseases, where a true method, and effectual Remedies become necessary, more own their Deaths to Physicians, than are pretendedly cured by them, as I have more clearly, and faithfully showed in the Conclave of Physicians. However, it is to the Art of Expectation Physicians are indebted for their Reputation, that occasions the ignorant World to continue the use of them. By the way, I have in the preceding Paragraph only proposed a supposal of Pipkin, and Tobacco-pipe powder, which I now tell you, is not a merum suppositum non supponendum, but hath been knavishly practised by some Physicians, with a success equal to what could have been expected from a Magistery of Pearl, or an Aurum diaphoreticum.  
4. As for those particulars, wherein I shall instance the Exercise of the Art of Expectation, though they are not Pipkin powders, they are very analogal unto 'em. In conclusion, if the Art of Expectation was not more universal than Medicine, whence doth it happen, that many Illiterates, as Gun-smiths, Heel-makers, regenerate high-way-men, some Apothecaries, and some Surgeons, do cure a far greater number than the chiefest of Physicians, were it not, that they are equally skilled in the Art of Expectation. These Expectation-Doctors are the safe men, the good children's Doctors, much in request among some wise Women. They are such, as in difficult Diseases kill by omission, and cure easy Distempers, by seeming to do something of no importance.   

CHAP. II.  
Of the several Sects of Modern Physicians.  
1. FRom their Subjects many Trades are observed to mutuate their distinction; from Brass the Brazier; from Steel or Iron, in French Fer, the Farrier, or rather Ferrier; and from Pysick the Physician; and from the contraction of all the three a very proper Nomenclature may be adapted to the plurality of conclave-Doctors, viz. a Brazen-Ferrier-Physician. To this universal distinction a more specific sub-distinction, abstracted from the particular matter they operate upon, seems necessary. Some wholly dedicating themselves to Iron or Steel, and Syrup of Steel, make use of its efforts against all Diseases, and do justly deserve the Title of Farrier-Doctors; others applying the Milk Diet, or Ass' Milk to all their Patients, may be dignified with the Name of Ass-Doctors. A third sort, giving themselves over to the Jesuits Powder, will be called jesuitical-doctors, sourbs from the top to the bottom. A fourth, seldom miss recommending their Clients to Tunbridg or Dulledg Waters, as if they pretended to be Dull-head Physicians. Bleeding is preferred by some in all cases, that are Butcher-Doctors. The last, who are the most numerous, aver all Distempers are to be expelled at the Fundament, and these are the T—rd Doctors. Here the Art of Physic, Monster like, appears to walk upon six Legs, though every Physician stands but upon one, yet not so firmly, but is apt to be tottered by every slight Distemper, and a difficult one throws him down to the Ground, whence he easily, like a Juggler, starts up again, and recovering his one Leg, claps his Wings, and crows himself Conqueror of the Disease, though with an usurped Title.  
2. For the good of the common Cause, these Physicians, though debauched into different Methods of Practice, all make a consort in one Cant, that by their sedulous discoveries in Anatomy, (as Circulation, Milky Vessels, Waterducts, nervous Liquor, nutricious and pancreatic Juices, ferments in the Throat, Stomach, Liver, Heart, Brain, Spleen, Kidneys, and in every part, as far as the little Toe, besides a hundred little particularies, of no other use than the Theory of the Spots in the Moon) they have so far out-started all the Ancients, that they have exalted their Art to the highest Pinnacle or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, which before was scarce an Embryo; and all this to enchant you into a firm faith of their Abilities, to bait and allure you into their Physic Nets. But to speak the truth, they are much short of the Candour, Honesty, Modesty, Learning, and Industry, the Ancients used, in making their Observation on Diseases, and Remedies, which was such, that they found, that abstinence, and lying still (that is, doing nothing, and being Spectators of Nature) cured more Distempers, than all their Interruption by Physic; which rule you find very oft enjoined by Hippocras, Galen, and Celsus, throughout all their Works; so that where these modern Adventurers pretend to cure one Disease, they, by being Spectators only, cured an hundred, which in effect was nothing, but being Actors of the Art of curing Diseases by Expectation.   

CHAP. III.  
Of the Ferrier-Doctors, with the good and mischievous Effects of Steel.  
1. THE Ferrier-Doctors are ranged in the front by vulgar Opinions, and the transmutation of Iron into Gold is in nothing more apparent, than in the exchange of their Steel Medicines into golden Fees. The effects derived from the various principles of Iron, operating according to the disposition of subjects they meet with in the body, prove as oft fatal and pernicious, as seldom happy and hoped for; a powerful detersive, and diuretic, is observed in the Sulphur of Steel, when it encounters with an acid in the humours, proper to incite it to combat, otherwise it unites with the vitriolic Salt, and both run into a cement, which adding a stronger fastness to Obstructions, doth frequently bung up the Vessels entirely. Judgement and Experience are in no case useful, as in adapting this Mineral to proper Constitutions. It is more bruited for the kill, then curative part; if you hit the mark right in the choice of it, you may perform a cure very wonderful; if you miss, the event is deplorable. Instances of the first kind are by far exceeded in number by the latter.  
By three or four large bleedings (as I remember) advised by a Coach-butcher-Doctor to Sir R. Bovy, labouring under a Quartan, and by as many Purges (whereof the least operated between forty and fifty times) prescribed by a subsequent T— rd-Doctor, the Patient was thrown into all the kinds of Dropsy, with a continuation of the Ague, notwithstanding the use of the Jesuits Powder in all its forms and quantities. From the Head to the Toe a more monstrous oedematous protuberance was scarce possible, his Belly so extremely filled with Water, and Wind especially, that would have supported him from sinking in any River; his Age was almost decrepit, his Appetite little or nothing, and his feebleness answerable to all Circumstances. Those cathartick Remedies, which the whole band of Physick-men have, and do hitherto erroneously depend on, would take no place in a distemper they had caused. Tapping must have proved speedily terminative.  
2. Through the use of Chalybeats variously mixed with Diuretics and Detersives, he was in few Weeks reduced to his former proportion of Body, which was lean, thin, and lank, his strength returned, with his appetite, and good digestion; nothing remained, but the swelling of his Legs, though considerably lessened, which was discussed by a lixivial Fomentation. His burden of Serosities I observed was daily lessened by large quantities of Urine, and insensible Perspirations. The greatest trouble I found at the beginning, in the cure of his Ague, which was effected by a Powder not unusual. What could be here successfully expected from Steel, was attained in all its parts, the sulphurous particles, in their abstersis and diuretic offices, kept even pace with the salin in the corroboratif and restrictive, whereby the Bowels were restored to their pristin firmness, and compact texture, and the Humours reduced to a mediocrity in substance, temperament, and fluidity. But in a hundred occasions Steel is observed to be retrograde, through ignorance of proper application to Bodies and Diseases.  
3. Some few years past, a Lady brought her Daughter from Reading side to London, accompanied with her Doctor in ordinary, who justified his Steel course by a senseless recital of Authors, and other of his Physic Companions, in endeavouring thereby to procure her Menstrua, to whose non-appearance at their due times and seasons, he imputed a Cachexia, and pale colour, that injured her Complexion. Three Weeks or a Month's progress in that method had entirely extinguished her Appetit, thrown her into an Hectic Fever, and a Cough so importune, that would not suffer her scarce to breathe or speak.  
4. The salts of her Humours closing with the vitriolique of the Steel, without loosening and untying the sulphurous particles from them, united their force of binding, drying, and damning up all the Humours, that by regurgitation were impelled into the Lungs and Bowels, which being now choked up by such a cementing Remedy, what was here to be done? Nothing that I could think more certain than a prognostic, that a few days would put a period to her Life, and to the Steel course also. This Ferrier-Doctor would needs turn Ass-Doctor, and abandon his Patient to Ass' Milk, at Chelsey▪ where in less than a week her hourglass was run out.  
5. Another case I remember of a Merchant in London, whom a Ferrier Physician pretending to cure of a Chronical cough, that had accompanied him twelve or fourteen years, pressed a solution of Steel upon him thirty days or longer, which indeed had much abated the Cough, but also had rendered him so hoarse, that a Mouse could not have heard him speak, at a yards distance, besides the loss of Appetite and Strength. I advised the Patient to take leave of his Ferrier and his Steel, ●nless he intended to stop up his Lungs, and desist from breathing. Much ado he regained his old Cough, which being so antiquated, a Cure ought never to be attempted beyond palliation, and upon a deterioration through a new Cold, or addition of a recent defluxion, beyond some lenifying or smoothing pectorals, an old Cough bearing the Office of a Pump, or an Issue, which with the superfluities of the Lungs, throws out the Crudities of the whole mass, the retention whereof would otherwise swell and choke these pulmonick Bellows.  
So true it is, as some certain pectorals are the life of the Lungs, that Steel, and all chalybeat Medicines are a certain bain unto them, the roughness and adstringent faculties of its vitriolic Salt, which they contain in a superlative degree, straitning and contracting in process of time the whole pneumatick Engine to a total suppression.  
6. From the preceding Paragraph flows naturally this observation, that where Lungs are hereditarily asthmatick, or adventitiously so, by universally inspiring, a thick smoky foggy Air about London, which from the dripping fits of the Climate in the Winter, proves no other all England over; Steel Remedies either in a dry or moist form, as Iron-waters, and Syrup of Steel ought to be regarded with a very squint suspicious Eye, and never called in use where the greatest necessity is not the chiefest indicant.   

CHAP. IU.  
Reciting a farther enumeration of the mischiefs of Steel, with a very eminent supposed case.  
1. NOW, if you will suppose a Man or Woman afflicted with any hypochondriac spleeny Distemper, or inveterated obstructions of the Bowels, either being easily incident into a Couch, and being never so little imbecillitated in their Lungs, a Steel Medicine exhibited, where the acid within the Body is uncapable to divide the Sulphur from the Salt, they run no small risk of puiking their gross slimy Humours into their Lungs, that will in time coagulate to an Asthma, ulcerous disposition of the Lungs, and probably a Consumption, and Hectic Fever; or if peradventure the Humours do not sublime, they will be compacted into immedicable Obstructions, and most obstinate Infarctions. Where such Medicines encounter with Youth, their Vigour possibly may subjugate their roughness, and menaced Mischiefs, which in those that are turned of forty, do very frequently ensue, either soon after, or upon a delay of a few years, and may easily be tract backwards to the Steel Original, whence they will evidently be found to take their source; neither are you here to expect an enumeration of all such like cases, which I can give you, unless you are armed with Patience of reading a Treatise six times bigger, than this will amount unto; neither can I without astonishment behold, how greedily Syrup of Steel is swallowed down at Paris, by most of the Patients of a noised Farrier-Doctor, who in the failure of this, doth immediately turn to Ass-Doctor, by his milky Diets; so that I cannot tell, whether I ought properly to say, the Farrier upon the Ass, or the Ass upon the Farrier.  
2. Beyond all peradventure the Sulphur of Steel being entirely stripped (as very few have hitherto yet discovered) of its saline particles, and their restringent faculties, (which in most preparations will in a great measure cleave to it (must become a most admirable deobstruent; neither did I ever yet arrive to any one process, that came near it, except one, which by bringing it over the Alembick, renders it soluble. The same process hath the same effect upon Antimony, and some few other Minerals, which since not appertaining to the Art of Expectation, will be improper to describe at present.  
3. It is not on the Bowels only, but on the Brain and Nerves, a long or oft repeated Steel course manifests its immedicable Injuries. Palsies, Convulsions, and extreme weakness of the Joints, I have more than once observed the consequences of it, which I can deduce from no other preceding causality, then by cementing and binding vicious humours in deep latent recesses, where by a long stagnation for some months, and sometimes years, they acquire a levain so pernicious, as to deprave and subvert the animal Faculty, enervating the whole system of channels, that proceed from the Brain, and impressing a virulency on the Juices of the Nerves; in which manner, and through the same means, it bears a very near affinity to the Jesuits bark, that hath so oft some years after caused Convulsions, and Syncopees; though never Apoplectic-fits, a denomination that makes Physicians that used it, to appear the greatest Blockheads; for Fits denote a type, and a circuit of beginning, ending, and returning, which an Apoplexy never did. Either it is a strong one, (Apoplexia fortis) which according to Hypocrates, and all other experienced Physicians since, doth infallibly kill; or slight, (Apoplexia levis) which for the most part turns to a Palsy. See Hippocr. Apho. lib. 2. Aph. 42.  
4. Imagine half a quire of Physicians of the same stamped treating a Patient, decumbent of Leipothymick, or rather Syncopal fits, interchanging reciprocally with violent Convulsions, or (if you please) spasmodic Paroxysms, which sometimes prove periodical. These symptoms, which are evident to all the World, what they are, being by them termed Apoplectic-fits, (a denomination never mentioned by any Author since the Creation) exposes them either to be grossly ignorant, (as appears by what is manifest before concerning an Apoplexy) or very sinisterly designing, if not in all, at least in the Babylonian Leaders, whom the rest easily will follow for large compensations, or to prevent being by them kicked out of so honourable an Employ. It is probable, the whole Chorus not arriving together, the first come, upon the sight of such an effroyable symptom, either being not sufficiently skilful, or not taking time to examine into the case, might mistake it for an Apoplexy, and too precipitantly advise bleeding, to make room in the Vessels for the Blood to move, and consequently to prevent stagnation, and coagulation. Now I would put the question, a Man, or Woman, being fallen into a swooning fit, Is there one thoughtful Physician among five hundred, that would have the courage, or so little sense, as to open a Vein? Did ever any authentic Author in Physic prefer Phlebotomy as a proper Remedy in this case? If you reply, there may be a Plethory; still not in one in a thousand will consent to it in the fit.  
5. To go on upon the forementioned supposition. I very well know, that a Physician, to free himself from the censure of a mistake, or erroneous application of a Remedy, will endeavour to justify himself, by inculcation, and hammering his Sentiment into every one of the Physicians called in, upon their first arrival; who either out of a Compliment, or false conception of the case communicated unto them, or untrue relation of the thing, or their proper ignorance and unskilfulness, being decoyed or fallen into the same opinion, are bound to justify the first Physician and themselves, and one another, singly and jointly; moreover, being blinded by the first appearance, they dare not, nor will not hereafter see plain, lest the standers by should accuse them of hallucination. The Disease being at first christened an Apoplexy, they were obliged to hold to that word; but going soon off, and returning with interchanges of Convulsions, they perceived plain enough, that it was no Apoplexy; but to conceal their mistake, they judged it necessary to keep to the first Notion, and slide it of● to Apoplectic fits, a species of impudence uncommon to any but themselves; as if the Art of Physic and Physicians were circumscribed by the walls of their Conclave, though any man might with the least glimpse detect their error, gross beyond what could proceed from Nurses, or mere Novices in Physic.  
6. I have more than ten times seen men otherwise very robust, fall into deep swooning fits, lying a considerable time, as to outward appearance, like unto dead, who by frictio●s of their Temples, vellications of their Nostrils, dolorous contortions of the Extremities, and pouring down their throats strong alexipharmacs, have usually recovered out of that fit, though soon after, by translation of the subtle matter to the Brain and Nerves, have been tortured with a Spasmodic fit, of no longer continuance, than the foresaid matter could be discussed by volatile Neuriticks, or Cephalicks. These sorts of Alternative fits, from their duration for several years, possibly for seven, ten, or twenty, more or less, import no imminent danger, unless attempted to be cured by unseasonable bleedings, and multiplied purges, by raising a mud of dormant Humours, which either a long chalybeat, or Jesuitical course, had dammed up, and cemented.  
7. Besides the forementioned causes that are the most frequent, it's indubitable, that the like Fits may owe their growth to reiterated debauches, inveterate obstructions, (whereby Humours may assume a virulency) and poisonous Minerals and Vegetables, which exert their activity in much shorter dimension of time.  
8. In the forementioned imaginary Patient, the first bleeding not being exempted from a just censure, may plead a pardon from the possibility of a mistake of the Disease, by the surprise, and from the force of the Argument alleged, that a bleeding, by making room in the Vessels, and accelerating circulation, doth prevent the Blood in stagnating. But that Indication being answered by a first larger bleeding, or a first and second mediocre depletion, to what end o● purpose is in the former a second, third, and fourth (whereof one or two may be in the Jugulars, which is never performed without a great risque) advised in large proportions, and some of them in the Syncopal fit? from matter of fact is desumed an Argumentum ad hominem, Bleeding very oft, though administered for prevention only in robust, and healthful Bodies, doth upon the stopping of the Blood throw them into a long and deep swooning, or Leipothymick fit, whence it has been observed some never returned. So that nothing is more naturally conclusive, if bleeding out of the Arm, or Jugulars, doth frequently precipitate an healthy strong man into a Swooning, or Leipothymy, it must necessarily force a weak Patient, who already doth labour under a strong Leipothy my or (which is worse) Syncopal fit, many degrees nearer to his End. Waving the Experimental, I proceed to the Rational, granting the first bleeding, especially it large, doth by making room, promote and facilitate the motion of the blood universally, whereby a stagnation is repelled, and a free perspiration procured. The second bleeding exhausting the vital, and mediately the animal Spirits, the third more, and the fourth yet more, the circulation must necessarily more and more be lessened, and impeded, through want of Spirits (for it is the Spirits, that are the impetum sacientes, and impulsors of motion within the Vessels) and warmth. Moreover, through the subsiding, and paucity of the Spirits, the pores are constricted, Perspiration impeded, and the virulent Steems, that occasion all the mischief, remaining unsubdued, by their minutely accessions, must inevitably become conquerors of Life, as sundry observations do exhibit unquestionable testimonies, and against matter of Fact all argumentations will be found sophistical. Upon a replique may be pretended, that the scope, intentions, or indications for bleeding, besides the abating of Plethory, are revulsion, and derivation; and secundarily or per accidens cooling, removing of pain, etc. You must apprehend, that the indications for bleeding have their respect chief to the antecedent cause, and seldom have any influence upon the conjunct, unless per accidens and secundarily; but in reference to virulent Steems, or venomous Humours, whereunto those that occasion the oft forementioned Symptoms, are analogal, if not really such, bleeding upon any supposition can never be put into use more than once, and scarce that. For instance, will you dare to bleed in a malign Fever after the beginning, or in the Plague? Suppose a man hath swallowed Arsenic, sublimate, or any other sort of Poison, or is fallen into Convulsions by a poisonous steem, can you pretend to bleed in this case? I could hearty wish Physicians did abstract such Theorems, or Maxims from observation, (the highest Form in the School of Physic) that would serve as Rules, whence to take true measures for the necessity, season, number and quantity of bleeding, and not to advise Phlebotomy at random, as most of 'em do.  
9 Suppose besides the third and fourth bleeding of the imaginary Patient, there is by a party Jury of Butcher-Doctors, and T— rd-Physicians, a smart Vomit given, and without computing of Clysters, a solution of the species of Hiera ●i●ra in Brandy, (vulgarly called Tinctura sacra) forced down every Morning, for several days together, in a body by such repeated losses of Blood reduced to a low ebb of strength, and the Spirits harassed and tortured by the return of deteriorated Syncopes and Convulsions, Vomits, and chief sharp fermentative Aloetics so oft repeated, all these must rake up the last remainder of the virulent Mud, and stir up with a violence the most latent Impurities, which without those disturbances might have continued their quiet for many years. Such outrageous Assaults, battering the Spirits and Humours continually, could not fail to press them to their last effort of a Fever, (which must be termed Febris moribundorum) to the suppression whereof, to exhibit the Jesuits Powder, is to give le coup de grace, or the rising blow to one, that has been so oft knocked down, and now upon the point of expiring. The day doth not more certainly follow the night, than that the ordinary little Medicines and Remedies that are used to Hysteric women, without purging or Bleeding, would have infalsibly recovered such an imaginary Patient; and nothing will more certainly kill an Hypochondriac man, or Hysteric woman, in the violence of their returning fits, than the course of bleeding, vomiting, purging, and Jesuiting before supposed or imagined.  
10. Without Candle and Lantern one may clearly discern, that nothing is more resembling Steel in pernicious Effects, than Jesuits Bark, and nothing more like the Jesuits Bark than Steel; moreover, that either is capable to engender the worst of Diseases some Months, and sometimes Years after the use of them.   

CHAP. V.  
Of Sulphur of Steel, and a most excellent substitute.  
1. IF nevertheless your confidence is so unically fixed on the Virtues of Steel, against opiniatre Obstructions, let your choice be determined in the Salphur of Steel, being a preparation in point of efficacy and security, over-topping all the rest; but withal let me recommend these 〈◊〉 bene's to your consideration, 1. That Steel in its best shape is the greatest Enemy to some particular Constitutions. 2. That tincture of Tartar is a Medicine universally agreeing with all Temperaments, where reserating Oppilations is the indication. 3. That the want of Success of this Medicine, and others of the greatest efficacy, is to be attributed to the underdosing of it, in the quantity of six, eight, or ten drops, whereas I seldom give less than half a spoonful, and sometimes more, diluted with a sufficient measure of a temperate Vehicle, in the imitation of which you shall seldom or never miss of your aim, or be frustrated of your Expectance. 4. That the common Tincture of Tartar is an exaltation of the Sulphur of Spirits of Wine rectified, through the adurent particles of a most forcibly calcinated Salt of Tartar, imbibing but very little of the Salin particles, through want of phleme in the Spirit. 5. That the Preparation next subscribed, being partly a Tincture, and partly a Solution of Salt of Tartar, is virtuated with an abstersif quality, derived from lixivial, slippery, or soapy particles of the Salt, whereby it's rendered a most excelling deobstruent, and aught to be preferred before the other, by as much, as it is of a far easier preparation, that may be finished with less toil, and in shorter time, which processes I have ever aimed at upon all other materials, well knowing, that laborious and multiplied changes of the form of things by distillation, sublimation, calcination, and other various fiery tortures, doth very oft destroy the nature of the thing, intended to be thereby exalted in Virtues, or corrected in Qualities. 2. Take two or three Ounces of well calcined Salt of Tartar, pour on it as much good Cognack Brandy, or spirit of Wine not rectified, as will over-cover it six ●●ngers breadth, digest it four days in Sand, in a bolt-head, to a yellow Tincture, then decant it, this is all; hereof give a Spoonful, and sometimes more in an apt Vehicle, Mornings and Evenings. 3. The nauseous taste of the Salt, though by this simple is much abated, yet is not entirely taken off, which may be easily performed in the Calcination of the Salt; but it doth somewhat impoverish its Virtue. By such a clean sort of Medicine joined with an Equipollent, can be attained in a very short interval of Time, what can scarce be performed by half yard long Apozems of the opening Roots, capillar Herbs, Flowers, Fruits, Seeds, Spices, and Syrups, as disgustful, as ineffectual, laborious, and chargeable, prescribed more for Pomp, than Use, by the famed T-rd-Doctors.   

CHAP. VI  
Of Ass-Doctors, their Milk Diet, Coughs, Consumptions, and Hectic Fevers; also of Bulch●r-Doctors.  
1. IT is not the least craft in the Ass-Doctors, where they spy a wasting of the Flesh, to term it a Consumption, which happening to be an attendant almost to every Disease, hastens Patients to flock in numbers to such Physicians; and that direful word carrying a dread in its signification, doth not a little multiply their Ass Practice, especially when they so highly advance the Credit of a milk Diet, by noising it to be the sole grand sweetner of the Blood.  
2. Sure I am, the Death of hundreds may be justly attributed to their Confidence in Ass' Milk, in contempt of all such Remedies, or Medicines, that were proper for the Cure of their Diseases. These Dietetick Fourbs, or Bonny-Clabber Physicians, are deservedly censured Criminal, for not rightly considering the nature of Milk, it being a food the most convertible into any vicious Humour, that's most abounding. In hot choleric Diseases, it's readily assimilated to Choler, renders the heat of Fevers more burning, a Headache less supportable, a drought more difficult to be quenched; in hot Stomaches waxes nidorulent, and in many it's very corruptible, coagulable, or curdly. Phlegmatic Diseases receive from it an addition of slime, the Stone and Gravel derive their nourishment and increase from it. Palsies, Drowsiness, Blindness, Catarrhs and Rheums have oft followed a Milk Diet. With a temperate Constitution it harmonies best. To cure so many various Distempers, as is pretended by a milky Diet, is as impossible, as by it to reinstall a disjointed Limb, or to cement broken Bones. An Ulcer in the Lungs, with a contemporary Hectic Fever, and Consumption, can no more be cured by an Ass-milkie Diet, than a Capon be roasted in the bottom of the Thames. This may be credited, that many emaciated Persons, incommoded with a Cough, have been restored to a plump habit of Body by Ass' Milk, diluting the Salts of their blood, that preyed upon the carnous parts, through the abounding Serum of the Milk, and smoothing the roughness of the said Salts by its butyrous or oily Particles; and in regard of its soft tender caseous parts, it is easier assimilated, than the stringy or fibrous Juices of Flesh-meat. In conclusion, he that cannot cure an Ulcer of the Lungs, with an Hectic, and Consumption attending, without Ass' Milk, in less than two Months, doth not deserve the Name of a Physician. As for the Hectic Fever, what they generally assert incurable, it certainly goeth off with the consolidation of the Ulcer, without making use of any Anti-Hectick. Whether the Ass-Patient, or the Ass-Doctor be the greater Ass, is easily decided by those, that have met with Athenaeus' Saying, a Grecian Philosopher, translated by Scìopius, exceptis Medicis nihil est Grammaticis stultius, that is, Grammarians are the greatest Fools of all men, but Physicians are yet greater Fools than Grammarians.  
3. The Livery-men of the prenumerated five Physic Guilds, are obliged to veil their Bonnets to the sixth of the Bonny-Glabbers, in the milky Treatment of Consumptions and Hectics, that ensue Ulcers of the Lungs, also such as are putrid, 〈◊〉 apostemated. The Butchers, to avoid an evident proof of down right Murder, are forced to obrtain from their wont course of 〈◊〉, in a Distemper where there is the greatest want of Blood, the substracting of which would probably abbreviate a Month's Life, more or less, to a week or a few hours. The T-rd-men, except those that are very far advanced in Impudence, do exulate in the use of their Purges, which would extremely promote a looseness, a Symptom they are commonly incident into; and happening, soon destroys, by stopping the Cough, and suppressing expectoration, the immediate forerunner of an instantancous Suffocation. Steel Medicines, and the Jesuits Bark, putting a stop also to Expectoration, as hath been objected before, are a bar to Ferriers, and Jesuitical Doctors. Neither can the Dull-head Physicians come into play, with their Aquarius, being contrary to all Expectoration. So that, as there is an Art of curing by Expectation, there is also an Art of killing by Expectation; for he that is rendered Consumptive through an Ulcer in his Lungs, by daily and weekly Expectation in vain, of amendment from a Milky Diet, neglects such means as might otherwise conduce to his Cure, whereby at last makes forfeiture of his Life to the Art of Expectation. Syrups, Lohoches, Lozenges, and the like, do under no other notion fallaciously deserve the name of Pectorals, than by their immediate smoothing of the roughness of the oesophagus or Gullet, wherein by nearness or affinity of parts it doth sympathize with the Windpipe, or aspera arteria. This seeming ease lasteth no longer, than a fresh emanation of saline Rheum, or Slyme out of the Glanduls wipes off the clammy Syrup; where, and in the Stomach the Rheum by its sharpness and a vicious ferment (as they term it) converts that, or any such Saccharaceous Medicine, into a corroding Acid, which is so far from being auxiliary against the Ulcer upon its arrival to the Lungs, that it excavates the Ulcer, and by stimulation duplicates the Cough. It cannot be contradicted, but that Honey in any pectoral Medicine used instead of Sugar, especially Narbon Honey, may contain a property answerable in some small measure the Indications of an Ulcer in the Lungs; because it seems to be an extract of the Balsamic Particles of fragrant oleous Flowers, that probably may arrive to the Lungs, without being entirely broken in their Virtues.  
4. I am not ignorant, that vulnerary Herbs, as ground Ivy, Lady's Mantle, Bugle, and many others, used in Decoctions, are in high esteem among several Physick-men, who do very confidently attribute to them the cure of divers Consumptions. But I am also very well assured, that those Vegetables, though supposed to be sufficiently empowered for the cure of Ulcers, must in their passage through the Stomach and Bowels, and mixture with the Humours, receive such impressions and changes, as strip them of their faculties, and energy, before they can traverse to the Vessels of the Lungs. What can be most favourably construed on their behalf, is, that some who have been much emaciated, and at the same time accompanied with a Cough of an old date, whence they have been erroneously pronounced Consumptives, did receive amendment, or a Cure from them; but than it is to be conceived, here was no Ulcer of the Lungs, nor Hectic Fever, nor little Imposthumes, nor putrid affection of the Lungs, which in a proper fence specify a Consumption strictly so called. In a putrid affection of the Lungs, it's not to be doubted, but what is expectorated, is slime mixed with purulent Particles, generated in the retired Pores of that Entrail, through a long Stagnation, which occasions an Hectic Fever, and a Consumption, that is so universal to this Island, and which neither Milk Diet, nor vulnerary Decoction, though sufficiently saccharated, or mellified; nor pectoral Syrups, Loho●hs, nor Lozenges, did ever cure, but inevitably kill by Expectation, there being but one Medicine, far different from the forementioned, that is impowered to answer all the Indications of a proper pulmonick Consumption. From the tonsure Remedy, by cutting off the Hair of the Head, or from Issues in the Arm, no more help can be expected, than from pairing the Nails of the Fingers and Toes in an Ulcerous Consumption; though in some few cases, three or four Cansticks applied to suitable parts of the Breast, in order to so many sontanels, may prove very advantageous; and it is beyond all objection, that the change of Air is most conducing to recovery, and a causa s●ne qua non.   

CHAP. VII.  
Of Dull-head-Doctors, Gravel and Stone, and several other Distempers.  
1. HYpochondriack Affections, some sorts of Scurveys, Obstructions of the Bowels, sterility and infoecundities of Women, Ulcers within the lower Belly, and especially, Gravel and Stone, come under the Jurisdiction of Tankard Physicians, though their usurped dominion over these Diseases doth not extend beyond the Summer Months (according to the trite saying, mensibus in quibus R. non bonum bibere water) and the coming into Season of Oysters, which is its utmost bounds and limits. Notwithstanding the avidity of their perquisites overpoising, the greatest prejudice their Hypochondriac, and Nephritick Patients can receive, they do not stick to impose on them drinking of Dulledg, or Tunbridg Waters in the hardest Frost, with a Condition of boiling them half away, or converting of 'em into Posset, or rather a curdy sort of Soupe. What ever ease and solace the crazy are sensible of from the washing and rensing of their Stomach, urinary Passages, and Guts, of floaty Humours for the present, the continuance by a potent Restriction, wedges and impacts (as I said before) the slimy feculencies into very stubborn Clogs, which can not otherwise be avoided, then by interposing alternately Purges, respondent to the Indications of the Disease, morbific Causes, and other Circumstances.  
2. Gravel and Stone are to be considered either in their fits of pain, diminution, and suppression of Urine; or when unmoved, the the Patient is free of those Symptoms. To exhibit Waters of the one kind or other in the times of misery, is to irritate and press those disturbant Causes to a greater fury, and increase of Pains, and sometimes of total suppression of Urine. Pains thus augmented, and continued, invite Inflammations and Fevers, which in very many prove Quarter-masters of Death. The Urine suppressed for six or seven days, turns to a fatal Drowsiness and Coma, or Lethargy, to which always a Fever is annexed. Purges are equally obnoxious to the same Evils, and therefore ought very carefully to be avoided. A course of Waters slabber ●d down out of the fit, by carrying off a lose mucus, detruding floating thin Impurities, and by locking up and compacting the grosser Humours, do undoubtedly very much prolong the interval of fits, tie up Pains, and prevent the quick return of the Symptoms forementioned; but by this means, the clog of those gross saline humours is deteriorated into immedicable, and the Stone so aggrandized, that throwing the Patient into a worse fit than ever, kills him. So that the sum of all is, that waters are empowered to grant an easy Life, and a short one; and so contrary to the cure of the Stone, that they do not so much as prevent the growth of it, unless it be during the time of the course they drink them; which appears by this, that the next fit a man falls into after his course of waters, is ordinarily worse, than any he felt before.  
3. That the dissolving and breaking of the Stone in the Bladder, or Kidneys, is within the sphere of Activity of Medicines, is a belief, that in improbability equals the highest fiction of Poetry. To break a Diamond, supposed to lie upon the ball of the Eye, by force of hammer, expresses a modus faciendi, or manner how it may be done imaginatively; but to reduce into crumbs, gritt, and powder, a hard Stone contained in so sensible a part, as the Bladder, by Goat's blood, and testateous Powders, by Stones and Glass grinded to the smallest proportion, and by Ashes, whereof there is an Example in the Electuarium justinum, Nephrocatharticum Arnol. Villain. de cineribus avicennae, diureticum Montagn; and by decoctions or distillations of such blunt materials, as the five opening Roots, Saxifrage, Strawberries, Winter Cherries, Daucus Seeds, and the like, doth for manner of acting, exceed the Fancy or Conception of the acutest Philosopher; and yet the powers of the Stone-breaking Medicines meet with such Credit in Physicians, that beyond possibility they most impudently assert matter of fact, performed by them daily upon those, that are troubled with the Stone. Well may it be said, Exceptis Medicis, nihil stultius, audacius, & mendacius Grammaticis. But farther, to pretend to dissolve a Stone in the Bladder, by might of cutting Medicines, after their first edge must needs, have been blunted in the Stomach, and other Bowels, through which they are obliged to pass with a tedious circuit, before they can arrive to the field of Action, the Bladder, is a Rotomodate many degrees higher, outdoing the worst of Gipsies. If my Memory informs me right, I have met, with a Narration in Duretus' A●notat. upon Hollerius, where he recites a Physician was presented to a Prince of Conde, to cure his Son of the Stone, by dissolving it in the Bladder in a few days. The prudent caution of the Prince or his Brother required the Experiment of his Medicine to be first made upon another Boy of a meaner Extraction, and troubled with the same Disease; a day or two after the taking of his dissolving Elixir, the 〈◊〉 having been miserably tortnned, Ghosted, whose Stomach, upon diffection of the dead body, was discerned corroded and ulcered in several parts of it.  
4. The millipeds or Sows (next to their Wives and Daughters) hold the highest rank among the Physicians their Stone-grinders, though hitherto it has not appeared in what particles of 'em those cutting acuities have been latent. If to their diuretic impulse they are pleased to affix that power, Rhenish Wine will plead for the Prerogative, which notwithstanding is accounted a general parent of the Stone and Gravel to the Germans. But these stupid Fools in Physic are possessed of a superstitious Faith of a T-rd, and such like Compounds, beyond the Popish credenda of a rotten wormcaten Relic. If they meet, in Mesues Avenzoar or Averro, with a Character of an Elks hoof, or testicle of a Beaver against Convulsions, though a Mouse hath oftener carried a Mountain on his back, than those Simples ever cured any such Distemper; yet do they continue in the use of them with that opiniatreness and brazen Confidence, that they conclude a man beyond his Senses, that will not yoke with them in their Physic bigotry. That a Spider, Toad, or Mercury tied about a man's Neck is a certain defence against the Plague; or that a Bezoar People, the Goa Stone, Pearl, and the like, are infallible curatives of that, and all other malignant Fevers; or an Eel-skin fastened to a woman's Thigh, doth dispel hysterick fits, are part of the foolish credenda of Physicians. From being a little versed in the silly Methodus medendi, and now and then ripping up the body of a Malefactor in public, and in their Capacity of prating of monstrous Pretences, and vain Discoveries in Philosophy and Physic, they infer themselves absolute Professors of their Art; whereas a Sea-horse in the bleeding himself, a Dog in eating Grass, a Crane in squirting Salt-water into his Fundament for a Clyster, must by them be acknowledged for their Masters, to whom, as their Scholars, they are indebted for part of their practical Physic.  
5. This may be received for great Truth, that the procatarctick, internal antecedent, efficient, material, and adjuvant Causes, being substracted and redressed, and that course continued to a great length of time, by defect of sabulous nourishment, and not being cherished, Nature by help of its Spirits and restored ferment (as they term it) will convert the hardest and biggest Stone into a mouldering, (provided by Age, and decay of the Bowels the Patient be not reduced too low) which perceived, the excretory passages require to be well relaxed, and rendered slippery by mucilaginous Emollients, and afterwards to be stimulated gently and gradually by some diuretics, to throw off the gritt. And this is the only certain, and secure method of curing that hitherto incurable Disease. The Earl of C. now deceased, some years since was extremely tormented with a sharp pain about a hand breadth above the groin, his easiest posture was lying on his Bed. To his Quality and great pain were mostly suitable five or six great Physicians; one might as congruously say six great Maggots, or six great Mites, people very improperly attributing the word Great to a thing so little and mean as an Expectation C. Physician; scarce one in twenty knowing the tithe of what he has forgotten, and what he still remembers is scarce worth knowing. The little success that attended their Prescriptions, convinced his Lordship of their scauty Judgement, which proved as various as untrue, the one insinuating the pain to be a Colic from Wind, the other an Ulcer; the other this, and another that. At last I had the Honour of having the cure of his Lordship committed to my care; upon no long examination of the matter, I assured his Lordship the pain in that part of his Belly was occasioned by an angular small Stone, that stuck in the ureter, whereunto, being a long time prepossessed with the false Sentiments of his late chashiered physic Doctors, he was very unwilling to give Credit, expressing that none of his Predecessors had ever been troubled with a Disease, that proves so commonly Hereditary, nor himself had ever discerned the least sign of Gravel; moreover that a Kinsman of his had lately been afflicted with a pain in the same part, that was evidenced to be caused by Wind, from the carminative (wind-breaking) Remedies, that entirely discussed it. I replied Artifici in sua Arte Credendum, and that the event would infallibly demonstrate the truth of the thing. I kept this Noble Patient to a very thin Diet a long time, and used Medicines answerable to the Method, and Indications above mentioned, which in conclusion discharged five or six Stones, about the bigness of a Pea, sometimes one, othertimes two in a day; from their colour and rough outside, they notified to be affalls and large crumbling of a greater Stone, form in the Kidneys, and through substracting from its growth, defect of cherishment, and through correcting of its causes was divided into large parts.   

CHAP. VIII.  
Of the Abuses in the Stone, and particularly of the abuse of the Catheter; also the Strangury and difficulty of Urine.  
1. THE rash and too frequent sounding by Catheter and Itinerary, to clear the doubt, whether a Stone be residing in the Bladder or not, proceeds more from the Intrigue of the gain-thirsty Surgeon, tho' to the greatest prejudice and pain of the Patient, than any absolute necessity; for unless his Resolution is entirely to submit himself to the hands of the Lithotomist, in case such a quarry be discovered, the certification of the conception and growth of the Stone must inevitably entail upon him a continual fear and anguish, whereof he is not like to be freed, before despair has thrown him upon so dubious a Remedy as the Knife and Forceps. But if his Mind wants firmness of Courage to endure the cruelty of such an Operation, let him by no persuasion yield to the search of any crafty Stone-cutter, whose business is more, to dive into his Pocket than his Bladder, witness that silly ignorant Fellow of the Town, whose Masters Reputation was his sole Court-card, whereby to gain so extraordinary a point.  
2. Since length of time, with the assistance of assured Remedies, pointed at by those demonstrable Indications above written, will cure a Patient of the Stone, and that any other Disease, that may be mistaken for it, be curable by the same means, to what end shall a search by Catheter be made; especially when that sort of exploration by the stop of the Instrument at the narrowness of the Sphincter, so rendered by swelling, a callosity, or a small carnosity, hath proved so oft fallacious to that degree, that men have been persuaded to be cut, where no Stone was, or ever had been; and having passed the dread and torture of the Operation, were forced to run the risk of a troublesome Cure of the Wound, that seldom is performed without a remainder▪ of a perpetual leaking, and difficulty of miction, and very oft with the loss of Life. Moreover, where probing hath detected no Disease in the Bladder, it frequently hath caused one, viz. Inflammation of the Sphincter, bloody Urine, Excoriations, Ulcers, continual gleets by injuring the prostates, and involuntary miction, strangury, dysury, total suppression of Urine, and almost all Diseases incident to the Bladder and Yard, not omitting those that Death hath ensued. On the other hand, the uncertainty of the Catheter and Itinerary is no less evident in those that really having a Stone fixed in a part, where that Tool not reaching, or having penetrated through a Stone, whose softness made no resistance, hath imposed on the Surgeon a fallacy of Opinion, that the Patients were free.  
3. There is no case wherein the use of the Catheter can rationally be justified, except in a total suppression of Urine, occasioned either by Mucus, crumbs of blood, or Stone being loosened and fallen to the neck of the Bladder, and the like occasions, to let out that liquid Excrement by removing▪ the obstacle.  
4. The Stone grown movable by being forced from its fastness by probings (as too oft has happened) violent motions, vomiting, purging, potent diuretics, and by its own weight or bigness, is the only argument, that aught to prevail with the Patient, to surrender himself to the doubtful success of Stone-cutting; for the pesanture of a Stone of compass, will ever incline it to return to the same place of declination, where it occasioned the former suppression, unless by lying still in bed so long, as by peradventure is required to be reattached to the side of the Bladder, from which it was torn off, it be prevented; so that the pretences of Gravel-Surgeons, in removing the Stone from the mouth of the Bladder by Catheter, to give passage to the Urine that stops by fits, where there is a long interval of time between, is a most ignorant and impudent cheat, the Stone in those cases being always firmly fixed to the side of the Bladder, and a suppression of that kind is ever occasioned by Mucus, Gravel, and the like causes. True, the Operator may notwithstanding sometimes perceive a Stone, which the posture or manner of decumbiture in the Patient, or swelling of that side of the Bladder, may bring nearer to the entrance of the Sphincter, the touching of which with his Tool, (the Catheter and the Itinerary within it) gives him that false apprehension, that he moved the Stone, (which in that case is the greatest nonsense and stupidity imaginable) for in all persons the Stone is ever fixed in the beginning, and its growth, and never becomes lose or movable, but where the ●its of suppression return almost every moment; and the attachment of the Stone to the side of the Bladder is so universal, that by reason thereof, many have been discovered to have lodged a Stone many years, and probably all their Life-time, upon the dissection of their bodies after death, who whilst living were never sensible, or suspicious of such a preternatural growth. Though Ignorance and Knavery are so hereditary to most, that are appurtenances and giblets of the Art of Physic; yet these Operators for the Stone (who commonly by reason of their desperate misfortunes are forced to be Renegades and Mountebancks) contain those qualities in the highest abstract.  
5. A strangury; and difficulty of Urine, proceeding in a lesser stream than usual, have frequently driven several into erroneous apprehensions of the Stone, being occasioned by a glutinous Mucus, through stagnation and adhesion, contracting a smart stimulating acrimony, that has drawn humours towards the Sphincter, whereby from an intumescence both a narrowness of the passage, or weakness of the discharging faculty, and an irritation to Urine, have ensued; the latter specifying a strangury, and the two former symptoms a difficulty. In neither of these purging, or diuretics have been found advantageous, but detrimental, so that these Pispot-Doctors to this hour have continued disarmed of proper Remedies to oppose them.   

CHAP. IX.  
Of Butcher-Doctors, and their Bleeding.  
1. THE Injuries of bleeding or bloodshed, indifferently advised by Butcher-Doctors, do by far supernumerate the benefits received by it, where necessarily it hath been administered. In the declination of Age it ought not, without great consideration and scruple to be admitted; for the present ease can scarce make a balance with the decay, and weakness of Bowels, it doth occasion hereafter.  
2. In Consumptions, Hysterick Fits, inveterate Hypochondriacks, Fluxes of the Belly, and particularly towards the middle of Chronic Diseases, it loseth reputation, when ever put into practice. After the abatement of a continual Fever by two bleedings in my Lord B. the Spirits being disengaged, had thrown the morbific matter into his Legs, where it excited pains night and day, violent beyond Imagination. Beyond twice taking of half an ounce of Diacodium, at ten days interval one from another, no hypnotic could be wrested from me. The Noble men that were his Visitors, expressed their Condolance, by sending Physicians in esteem with them. The Ferrier-Doctor durst not adventure his specific in ordinary S. of Steel, which necessarily Tortures to the highest extremity would have ensued, but le●t him with a prognostic of death. A little after a Butcher-Doctor, whom the vogue reported to be in his usual exaltations every Morning before Nine of the Clock, by drinking his Master's Health, would needs have introduced a bleeding, which inevitably would have verified the Farrier's prediction. However, his pains were entirely removed in eight days, in a frosty snowy Season, by a Medicine the most uncommon, and the Patient restored to Health, protracted to this hour. This observation is only adduced to expose the bestiality of Physicians in their bleeding and bloodshed in Chronic Distempers, in Persons advanced in years, beyond forty and fifty, the error whereof I can attest to have been the sole cause of the death of several in such cases. The reasons are obvious to those, whom observation hath taught the good and evil effects of bleeding. I conclude with this general remark, where bleeding and purging have no prevalance, the Conclave Physician is less valuable, than an old Shoo. To return to the Art of Expectation.   

CHAP. X.  
Declaring the Warehouse of Expectation Physicians.  
1. THE attainment of the End through proper Means, is no more peculiar to Medicine, or any other Art, than to that of Expectation. It is Health, real or pretended, both these Sisters (though the one be legitimate, and the other spurious) drive at. To palliate, meliorate, preserve, and restore, is the principal and ultimate finis, or end of the medical Art; but Lucre, a Purse, Gold, Silver, is that of the Artist. So far in point of honesty the one excels the other. The Ancient Greek, and Arabian Physicians, are now so much despised by the supposed accession, and advancement of a new Theory, and a Cortex-Steel practice, that in my Opinion one certain part of Europe would in some tract of Time want Inhabitants, were not a robust Constitution, and Expectation the Guaranty's of Health.  
2. That the Smallpox, Plague, malignant Fevers, and many other Diseases have invaded sound bodies, by figuring morbific Ideas on the imaginative Spirits, is a concession the vulgar of Physicians do acquiesce in. So that, if the Maxim holds, that Contraria contrariis curantur, it points at the ready means (or media) by altering, and reducing the figure of the materia subtilissima, or primi Elementi of the Brain (the animal Spirits) to their pristin form, and order of motion, through which those counternatural vortices are appeased, and consequently Health restored; all which is so aptly performed by Expectation Physicians, in their confident and bold assertion, that the Patient shall be cured, by virtue of what he writes down in his Recipes. This making a strong impression on the sick man's Fancy, and inordinate motions, the fury of the animal Spirits (which are frequently causes of Diseases) are allayed and appeased; which being daily pursued, is the undoubted means, the Art of Expectation uses; whereas, as shall hereafter be rendered plain in various instances, what is marked down in his Serowls, or Recipes, can conduce no more to recovery of health, than a Laplanders charm to procure a fair Wind: and that which adds extremely to the forementioned strong impression, is the gravity, port, pretended Learning, and vogue of this bold assuring Physician, and Undertaker.  
3. To know the probability, or capacity of the pretensions, and performances of an Artist, by the dimension; number, and quality of his Tools, is a matter of no great difficulty; and considering the nature of a Razor, you may easily believe it probable, that a Barber is capable of shaving you. My next business therefore is, to examine the box of Tools of the Physician, which is the Dispensatory, or Pharmacopoea, that for number and quality exceeds the tools of an hundred Artists, I may well say, of all that are in Europe, Asia, and Africa, there being nothing under the Earth, on it, or above it, or what is contained in all the Elements, even the Elements, and what is consistent of them, but what is registered there, or at least belongs to it. There is japan Earth, Armenia, Lemnia, Tripoli, Strigonia Earth, etc. all sorts of Water, that Heaven and Earth afford; all Minerals, all sorts of Dung and Piss; Serpents, Toads, Spiders; in fine, there is nothing in the Universe, but what is the Gibblets of the Pharmacopoea, or Physic Warehouse.  
4. Every Remedy ought to relate to a Disease; wherefore as the number of Remedies are indefinite, so Diseases should be proportionable in number; and what strange Creature would a man appear, were he to be subject to more thousands of Diseases, than a Physicians head can be stuffed with? A Monkey having caught a Louce, should he bring a Chain to tie his Legs, a Hatchet, a Saw, a Knife, a Mallet, and twenty Instruments more to cut off his Head, it would seem a very unusual farce; but far more ridiculous is it, to see a Physician muster up all, what Heaven and Earth contains, to resist and expel those few morbific causes, that occasion all the Diseases of man. And the Apothecary should he in obedience to the Physicians order, or in complaisance to his immensurable folly, provide himself with all the materials, his most elaborate Dispensatory directs, his Shop would no more be capable to contain them, than a Pill-box could an Elephant.   

CHAP. XI.  
Expressing the Original, and first building of the Physic Warehouse.  
1. THE rambling mode among many Cities, that are honoured with a combined fardel of Physicians, to compile and divulge a Dispensatory, is also imitated by one, that if from the number of Simples and Compounds, wet and dry, hard and soft, boiled and roasted, preposterous and incongruous, superfluous, loathsome, and inconsistent mixtures, measure is to be taken of its Excellency and Pre-eminence beyond others, you are to concede the Laurel to that Pharmacopoea (or rather deformed Copy of Medicines) which I once in a Discourse, out of mere Compliment and Raillery, did aver to be the best: but if to a necessary only, and select number of Simples, and their agreeable and rational Compositions, a reference must be had of their worth and validity, it is to be esteemed the worst of the worst Pharmacopoeas extant. And if the folly of men, that would appear to the World Viri graves, docti, and wonderfully experienced, will make you laugh, you may burst with the History of their Physic Cookery.  
2. These Velvet Flatcaps being squatted down within their Magic Circle, the Vrsus Major spews an harangue to the Cubs about him. Since the Supreme Authority over the Lives and Deaths of men is devolved upon us from all Antiquity, and that by Custom and Example of their Fathers their Children do grow up to the same subjection to our power, and undoubted Faith of our infallible Abilities, it's our duty to express our care, in chalking down such simplicities, and compound Medicines, and immutable Laws of their Preparations, that may give a sufficient employ to Apothecaries, by the multiplicity and numbers of Waters, Earth's, Stones, and other Minerals, Vegetables, and Animals, to amuse their Understandings; and by their mysterious mortarisations, siftations, and most senseless jumblations of them together, may astonish and amaze these our Servitors, who lapsing into an admiring trance of our indefatigable Studies of Infinities, will discourage them from undertaking upon our Profession, and detain them in a most ignorant slavery to us. This propagated by them among the Commonalty, and thence descending to all subsequent Generations, exalts us above the Heathen Deities, and establishes unto us a perpetual Empire over the Being's of Mankind. Let then our first decree empower eight Commissioners under the Age of one hundred, who by their long Travels through all the Saxon Angles, and Norman Counties, and great forgetful Readins of Arabian Authors, shall accumulate, ●hat ever can be heard of, thought, or understood of all Physical Bodies, s●●ple or compound, having virtue to kill, to cure, to mend, to destroy, to heat, to cool, to wet and to dry all sorts of Temperaments.  
3. The octogenerary Legates bringing into the Conclave their Laps full of Materials, extracted out of Mesues, Avenzoar, and what could be picked out of the rest of those Barbarian, unpolished, superstitious, and incredibly ignorant Arabian (or rather mad rabious) Impostors, are approved and ordained to be digested into those orders and forms you see in their Dispens. with a Proclamation made, that if any body has any thing more to be added to this indigested mole, he may be heard, and accommodated to his Satisfaction. There were very few but thought, that he that did not contribute some Medicine or other, it would derogate from his Experience, or Capacity; therefore every man brought in his Grannums Medicine. One would be admitted for his Ointment, wherewith his Grandsire of blessed Fame infallibly cured Corns, the other for an Ague-frighter, the third for a Powder of the Countess of K. brought out of Gascony; a fourth, for a Powder to cure the bite of a mad Dog, the fifth for an unaccountable Electuary, wherewith a great King in the days of old cured all Poisons; another too much addicted to the water of Life, thought the whole work would be imperfect, if that incomparable Lille Bolera Spirit (Vsque) were left out. In fine, here is a rude ill shaped big-bellied mass moulded together, and to add lustre to it, it's declared to be communi opera adornata; to their eternal shame be it spoken. These Circulators Koran being thus couched, and put into a Parchmin frame, Allegiance and Supremacy is to be conjured to it by their dextra, to be kept sacred, and not to be deviated from neither by themselves, nor, their Servitors; so help them Mimm●●. This is the original of their great Fabric in gross, which hereafter I will give you in retail.   

CHAP. XII.  
Presenting a taste of Physic Cookery.  
1. THE Octogenerary Spaniels apply themselves to the lapping of all sorts of Waters, and by their palate surprisingly discerning, are capable to distinguish an hundred sorts of Waters, which are to be alphabetically ranged in the front, to be reserved until any of these Lap-landers shall have occasion, to prescribe this, or the like Julep.  
R Aq. Endiu. Cichor. Borrag. a. ℥ iij. Aq. Nymph. Lactuc. a. ℥ ij. Syr. Violar. ℥ ij. vel ℥ ijss. m. f. julap.  Sumat haustum urgente siti. 
2. This Julep consisting of six simple Waters, and prescribed possiby by six silly Conclave-Doctors, in consult (for every one will put in his water) to contemperate the heat of a Fever, is exactly parallel with the following prescript of Cookery.  
3. Suppose a Conference of six Cooks for making a good Soupe, whose order is, to take of Thames-water fetched from Hammersmith, of Lambs-Conduit-water, of New-River-water, and of Hide-park-water, of each one quart; of Well-water, and Rain-water from Hamsteed, (where the Air is clear, and not smoky) of each one pint, etc. one might very well imagine these Cooks broke lose out of Bedlam, to meet about their Soupe, or at least, their Superstitious Criticism exceeded the greatest folly of men in their choice of Hammersmith-water, lest being too near the disimbogue of the Thames, it might conceal some brackishness, derived from the nearness of commerce with the Sea. And that from the compound of many various waters might result such an occult Excellency as should contribute an agreeableness extraordinary, is a notion so exactly square with our Physick-men, expecting from the jumble of those waters, what was not in the power of any one of them being single; though in reality the difference, if any may be conceived, is less between them, than between Thames— water and Hide-park-water.  
4. The distilling those Waters from Herbs, growing in a good soil and healthful Air, and gathered at the New of the Moon, moving through a good Sign, two or three hours, precisely after Sun rising, is perhaps a piece of Nonsense, surpassing the crazy Conceptions of those Water-Cooks.  
Nothing is more commonly and daily prescribed by most Physicians in Fevers, than such sorts of Juleps, interchanging those Waters as variously, as Ringers do Bow-bells; and yet nothing is more certain, than that Riverwater being once distilled, doth equalise, if not surmount any of them, either for a Vehicle, or Contemperation; even thin Grewel (to avoid the trouble of distillation) made of Oatmeal or Perl-barley, may make an equal poise with either of them. And here may be moved a question, a rich Patient rewarding six Physicians with six G●●neas, for consulting about six simple Waters, whether he be the greater fool, according to the old saying, A Fool and his Money, etc. or the Doctors the greater Knaves?  
5. Pusillanimity, and fear of Death, being oft the effects of a Diminution, and Subversion of the Animal Spirits in great Diseases, may influence the wisest of men, to reach out their hands to a Shadow of any thing, that bears the resemblance of help, and for that reason his surpassing profusion to a Physician, may be censured rather a surprise upon his Understanding. A Physician on the other hand, excuses his acceptance of immoderate Fees, by the vulgar Saying, That nothing is freer than Gift; however it's left to your Judgement, whether his slighting of a Patient by negligent Prescriptions, short and seldom Attendance, doth not put an Extorsion upon him in the exchange of his reasonable Gratuites into extravagant Rewards.   

CHAP. XIII.  
Setting forth the wonderful Charity of Physicians.  
1. BUT to come nearer home, I must represent a Scheme to you of the Candour and physical Conscience, Honesty or Generosity, or what else it may be termed of six Physicians, who they are, and of what quality, where and when to be found; you may be informed by the perusal of their printed Advertisement, very industriously distributed among most Coffeehouses, and Street-walkers, by some of themselves, and Porters thereunto authorized. Behold then the true Copy. viz. Advertisement. The Physicians of the College, that used to consult twice a Week, for the benefit of the sick, at the Consultation-house, at the Carv. A●g. and Cr. in Kingst. near Gld-hall, meet now four times a Week; and therefore give public notice, That on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, from two in the Afternoon till Six, they may be advised with by the known poor, and meaner Families for nothing; and that the Expectations and Demands from the middle Rank; shall be moderate: but as for the Rich, and Noble, Liberality is inseparable from their Quality and Breeding. Have you any work for a Cooper? Here lives a Wyer-drawer. To the best of my remembrance, I have met with some Doctor's Bills, viz. Trigs, Tetramagogons, fletcher's, Nendicks, etc. which have been more ample and significant, giving a Catalogue, of what Diseases they pretend to cure, as principaliter, Pox not always got by Women, Megrim, Gout, Stone, principaliter, Scurvey, etc. Further they advertise you, they are to be spoken with every day, from seven in the Morning, until six at Night, a sign they are much more industrious, than those worthy Gentlemen, who seem to keep holy the Saturday, and not to labour, neither they, nor their Ass, nor their Ox; but what shall the known poor, and meaner Families do, or where shall they apply themselves, that fall sick on Saturdays? And what will the Doctors do for Money to buy a Sheehead for the Sunday? though notwithstanding I presume, the Rich and the Noble shall be very welcome on Saturdays, and Tuesdays too. And suppose, a man is Noble, and not Rich, there I humbly conceive, Liberality is separable from his Quality and Breeding; whither will you send him, ad Infernum? But set the case, a man is both Rich and Noble, he will possibly chose too send for a Noble Doctor, or a rich Coach-Doctor, and not give himself the trouble to hunt for a Peripatetic Doctor seven miles off; neither are there many Noble men within the Precincts of their Diocese. They say the known poor, How shall they know any man to be poor? There is none poor, but the poor Devil, he shall have advice Gratis. For nothing! a very proportionable Reward, for nothing but Advice, ex nihilo nihil fit; but I hope the meaner Families, and the poor, shall pay for their Medicines, wherein it's presumed, Mr. Doctors will find their Account. After all, here is a plain Contradiction, to pretend to give Advice for nothing, and to set up the sign of an Angel and Crown, ho● est, an Angel is expected from the meaner Families, a Crown from the poor, and what you please above a Guinea, from the Rich and Noble, besides paying the reckoning; Item, for Cordial Powders, for Juleps, for Canvas, galoon, Thread and Silk, belly pieces, and sewing of your Sleeves. Indeed, I think, these Gentlemen Doctors are outdone by the Car-men-Doctors, who generally are to be found at the sign of the blue Ball.  
2. But in plain terms, these sort of Physic Bills, both of the on● and the other, are termini convertibiles of M— bancking. Well, but there must be some extraordinary Witchcraft, or alluring bait, in proclaiming themselves Physicians of the College, as if Hypocrates, Galen, Celsus, and a thousand more eminent men, (that would scorn to be of a College) had been no Physicians. But what College do they pretend to be of; of Paris, of Amsterdam, of Zion College, or of Obediah's Colleges, no, they style themselves Physicians of the College 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, as if there were no other Innuendo, or College, but that of Nova Porta. But who are the Members? Imprimis, a French Doctor, a Low-dutch Doctor, a High-dutch Doctor, and few high and low English Doctors, a pretty parcel of Colleagues, and a very worthy Combination. Methinks I could fancy six Doctors in a Consultation Room, each sentineled at a Window, to look out sharp for ● Patiented; by Gar, cries the French Doctor, me see a Patiented coming, whereunto in a Chorus, they joyfully echo. Roast meat. But what is he? He be a very sin Gentliman, but he hath a blue Apron on replies Monsieur; he may be an Alderman's fellow for all that, saith another. The Patient enters with a low Reverence, and a Tres humbel serviture Monsure; the French Doctor embraces him with a Repartee, Monsieur je suis ravi de l'hou neur● d' estre capable de vous servir, What's you▪ Complaint, you can speak French? P. Parbleu, my Disease does. Dr. You got the Franche Pock then? povure homme! P. I forgot to say my Prayers on a Saturday Morning, at Night I was picked up by a Gentlewoman, dressed much A la-mode, I conducted her to a Tavern, she made me drunk, gave me the Pox, and picked my Pocket of all my week's Wages. Dr. Ho! Pavure Enfant, we cure you in a little time, you pay us ten pound. P. Good Sir, I am a poor Weaver, I have a Wife and six Children, I never wrought at a French Loom before, a cursed Trammel, I am an Object of Charity, such as your Bills point at, and I humbly beg your Misericorde. Dr. jerenie, pardons les miserables, you can get the Money to be drunk in Sack, the half Crown for the Whore, and no largent for the Physician. Peste! point d' argent, point de Suisse; no Money, no Cure. P. I will turn my Wife and Children to the Parish, and sell my Looms to satisfy the Charity of Physicians, I perceive none but Fools and Beggars die of my Distemper. Dr. Courage then, our French Galen Doctor Moliere in his non pareil Treatise of le malade imaginaire gives most admirable Directions, that are much a propos in does case. He say dus; mais si maladia opiniatria, non vult se garire, quid illi facere? In English, but if the Disease prove stubborn, (as the Pox usually) and will not cure itself, what is to be done? He resolves Clisterium donare, postea segnare, ensuita purgare; that is, give a Glister, afterwards bleed, and then next purge. Dis is our Method of Physic in France for all Diseases, and especially for does pocky one; and you know, my most worthy Colleagues, the French Physicians be reputed the best in the World for the Franche Pock, it is our Country Disease, and much more common with us than de Scurvy in England. Now Messieurs I beg de pardon for speaking first and last, from the begin of de Consult to the end, it is the Prerogative of French Physicians, who can speak, and not tinck, (savii in bocca, pazzi in testa) others can only think and not speak. The Low-dutch-doctor, Come hire Shentilman, laet me sien; Sacr— t that is de Spaenish pocken, daer in●et you vor betalen one ninety Richeses daelders min here. The High-dutch-doctor, Das dich der thunder sleet, der Barnheyter hat das Napels zeer, der theivel, las er bezalen. The Low-English Doctor, Clarissimi Domini, This is a true Object of Charity, a known poor man by his Apron, he shall pay nothing for Advice; let him pay seven pound to the Apothecary for his Medicines. So here will come to each Doctor twenty Shillings, and twenty Shillings to the Apothecary, for his mercurius dulcis and Guaiacum; for House-rent, firing, and other decrements; in conclusion, the Apothecary has the most Charity. P. Miserable Wretch that I am, to be struck at once with the Diseases of all Nations, the French and the Spanish Pox, and the Evil of Naples; cursed pettycoat, worse than Pandora's Box, steaming a poison enough to infect a whole Nation. A pox upon all your Banter, I will throw myself on the public Charity of the Lock, and present the Surgeon with forty. Shillings, the remainder of my Looms: and from the Charity of Doctors, and the p●upers of Proctors, good Lord deliver us.  
3. A Shoemaker, one of the meaner Families these Mounser Doctors seem to point at, being desirous to be conducted by a Friend to an honest and charitable Physician, arrived at the door of one, against whom he immediately made this Objection; that t●other day upon a visit made to his Wife, the Doctor had after a moments retard prescribed a clyster of Milk and Suggar, and at his exit he had presented him with an half Guinea Fee, with an humble beseech, that his Worship would have the goodness to return next Morning, which he did not; and therefore imagining, that when he gave him his Fee the day before, the Doctor's Eye was fixed upon his Coach and Horses; it was a plain Innuendo, that the ten Shillings and nine pence did not answer his Grandeur, he was resolved to fetch him again with a promise of a stronger Reward, which at their parting was two half Guineas, the one being intended for the Doctor, and the other for the Horses; but he found, that the Horse-doctor had plunged his Patient into a worse state, and for that reason would be handed to another, that was no Horse-doctor, where the door being open, they entered into the Parlour, and there perceived the Doctor dead, and nailed up in his Coffin. However his friend would needs by saluting the Physician with a knock or two at his Coffin, ask his resolves aloud upon two queries. What shall the Shoemaker's Wife take? The Doctor said nothing. What will your Doctorship have for your Advice? The Doctor said nothing. Then nothing she shall take replies the Shoemaker, and I thank you for nothing; and there is no C— Doctor honest and charitable, but when he is dead. I will not aver the truth of this Relation, but I will avow, there is nothing more true than the Moral Wolves charitably helping Sheep out of a Ditch, or Cats releasing Rats out of a Trap, aught to be recorded among the Legends of Wonders.  
3. Treves de raillery. The affinity of the Subject, revives my Memory with a noted Coach-Doctors Avarice, extorting five Guineas from a Noble Patient (whose Liberality was inseparable, etc. terms tacked not long since to some printed Mandatory Letters) for five grains of Hues' Powder; a pretended correction of a Turbith Mineral, or at best an ordinary solar precipitate; but an ill hour scratched him, when upon a surprise in the formation of an adulterine foetus, he was obliged with his Breeches at's heels to blind the Eyes of a Mercer's Nurse with three Jacobusses.  
5. It was Charity in another Coach-physician, and quondam Schoolmaster, at an Assize Court of Judicature, testimonially to clear a Gentlewoman of the dismantling her Husband; but he proved a very suspicious Evidence afterwards in marrying of her: In my Opinion the Credit of such a Witness ought to be exactly poized in another affair of the greatest Importance.  
6. He that entrusts a Banker with his Estate, if he endeavours a fraud, the Law puts the Creditor in a Condition to retrieve it; but in making a Physician a Feoffee in trust of your Life, as all People by Custom and Example usually do; if he cheats you of it clandestinly, both you and your Heirs are defeated of all juridical Satisfaction, as Moliere doth between jest and carnest intimate in his jargon Description of the Power, Authority, and Privileges granted to a Physician in his Diploma, in the comical Tract above mentioned, viz. Ego cum isto boneto veneral●ili & docto, dono tibi & concedo virtutem & puissantiam, medicandi, purgandi, seignandi, pereandi, taillandi, coupandi, & occidendi impune per totam Terram. In effect, a Physician is as much Master of your Life, as any Prince in the Universe of the Estate of his Subjects. The hotter Climates are sufficiently pregnant of Examples, where the Medico is made the chief machine by his occult Medicines, to transfer great Personages into another Orb; he best knows how to lacker and lay a Varnish over those direful survening Convulsions, Syncopees, Dysenteries, and lingering Fevers, by charging them on Fermentations of dormant Humours, malicious Lunations, and Intemperatures of the Seasons. Instances of this sort of Practice are numerous, of Ancient, and fresher date. In the Life of Luis the Eleventh, Meseray record, the King of Arragon's eldest Son posted to his Tomb by a Bolus, given him by his Physician, whom his Mother-in-Law, upon some difference between them, had by a very tempting Fee embarked in that design. Caesar Borgia owed the Execution of his chiefest Exploits of this Nature to a Physician, that was his Confident; but History 
* Consult the Minutes of the Court for Poisoners of Paris.  doth furnish such an abundance of poisonous Achievements by Physicians, that it's needless to charge this small Tract with their recital.   

CHAP. XIV.  
Relating a most signal Example of a knavish Physician, with an Innuendo, that abundance of that Profession are of the very same stamp.  
1. IN the preceding Discourse it's avowed, that the fond concern for Life, and senseless credulity of an umbragious assistance, throw a man oft into a Precipice of a certain Death, attended with scorn and contempt of his Judgement, by fastening his hopes upon some brazen Physician or other, an instance whereof we have the more remarkable, as verified in a Person the most Rusé and tres-advisé Prince of his time, Luis the Eleventh King of France; and the reading of that passage not being less astonishing, than it is common in Persons of the highest degree, and consummated Accomplishments, puts an obligation upon me to transfer it hither. The continuated embaras of mind in reducing a most disordered People to tranquillity, had at length by sympathy rendered his Body very crazy, which gave his Physicians frequent occasions for Consultation.  
2. jaques Cottier a Burgundian, to make his marks to bear in the absence of the other two (whereof the one was a Scots Physician, taken after the battle of Nancy, wherein the Duke of Burgundy was killed, and was retained by Lovys for his famed Honesty and Learning; the other was Draconi● 〈◊〉, Professor and Chancellor of the University of Montpelier) perceiving the King's fear of death, and his solicitousness for recovery, had extorted this question from him, whether he could cure him? Cottier, a man of little Learning, and elevated to this high post in Physic, by the Favour and Recommendation of the Duke of Savoy, answered him yes, provided he would solely intrust him; and in doing so he would do much better, in regard the other Physicians did not know his temperament so well as he; for as to him, ever since he had been in his Service, he had studied nothing, but to know his Constitution, and that the others did not much regard that, and did not acquit themselves of their duty; minding nothing but to enrich themselves, desiring the King not to reveal to the others the advice which he gave him. But as to himself, that he would be constantly near his Person, searching by industrious Readins, at the hours of his leisure, among the Ancient Authors, Remedies for his Sickness. And the more he thought on his Disease, the more difficulty he found to cure it. Also that he had successfully served the King several times, and that without him he had not been alive, for as much as the other Physicians had oft ordered him Purges, and other strong and violent Medicines, and that he alone had privately corrected their Prescriptions. He did further persuade him, to command that no body should come into his Chamber hence forward, without the leave of the foresaid Cottier, and by this means did secure the Government of the King's Person to himself.  
3. And to insinuate better thence forward into the King's Favour, he did confederate himself with Olivier je Dain his Barber, but a man very ignorant, though the King was much advised by him. This Barber confirmed the King in what the Physician had told him, and by the same means he put the Apothecary in ordinary in disfavour, having reported to the King, that he never had good Drugs, whereby he was cashiered with a great deal of disgrace. Saith Luis Guion (from whom, and jean de Serres this Relation is extracted) one may easily see how Princes very often are subject to be deceived by false Reports.  
4. The King grew so chagrin, that when they had brought little Lions from Africa, which he had expressly sent for, he would never see them. One day among the rest the King was peevish, and took a fancy to discharge one that waited upon him in his Chamber, because he had given him warm Ptisan to drink, and said angrily, that he did not only discharge him, but all the Officers of his House. And ●aques Cottier, who was there present, told him, I know very well 〈◊〉, that you understand I shall be comprehended among them, but I do assure you, swearing a great Oath, that after I am gone, you will not live eight days, and this will be found true. The King was so frighted with the words of this man, that from thence forward he put all, both his Person, and his Kingdom, and all that he had, into the Power of the said Physician, and would no more see, neither his Children, nor Wife, to which his Physician had contributed very much.  
5. A great Gentleman of Campaigne, who was called Cortenay, had committed two Murders, coming to Court to procure a Pardon, obtained it by the Intercessions this Physician made to the King. The Chancellor then having refused to seal this Pardon, being granted against all Equity; which being come to the King's knowledge, caused the Seals to be brought to him, and made the Physician Cottier Lord Keeper of the Seals, and the Chancellor was sent home with a great deal of disgrace.  
6. It happened, that for ten or twelve days this new Chancellor received but little money by the Seals, whereof he made his Complaint to the King, who was sick, that he got nothing, in regard he never stirred from him, and that he used to get a great deal of money by Consultations and Visits he made to the sick, before he was confined to be always near him, and that he prayed him to take notice of that, and of his Merits. This King who believed that his Life did entirely depend upon this Physician, fearing that he would abandon him, made his Privy Purse (Thresorier de l'espargne) give him in ready money fifty four thousand Crowns, (which in those days was as much as six or seven hundred thousand Crowns now) and should have had much more, if more had been found in his Coffers, for looking after him only five Months. Mezeray, as I remember, agrees in the same Sum of Money. Moreover, he caused to be given unto his Nephew the Bishopric of Amiens, and all his Friends and Relations were provided with brave and great Estates, such as he liked best. The King being sick, let him do what he would, and durst not contradict him in any wise.  
7. The King grew so thin and dried up, that he seemed to be rather a Skeleton, than a man, and all through the ignorance of this Physician; for his dry Melancholy Body ought to have been moistened, and moderately warmed by Nourishment, as well as Medicines; and whereas he usually asked for Wine, and boiled Capon, this wretched Physician would never allow him any, though nevertheless very proper for his Health. Mezeray tells you, that by his Physician's advice, he used to be bathed in children's Blood to sweeten his Humours. Cottier at last prescribed him strong Presumes to smoak his clothes and Hair, which being used very often, threw the King into Convulsions and Swoonings. But somethime before, his fears of Death increasing, moved him to take hold of another Remedy as deceitful and vain as his using (as De Serres styles him) an odious impudent audacious Physician, much like most other pretended Doctors. One Sieur Lavardin perceiving the King was gulled out of his Life, was resolved at any rate to see him, and told the Physician, the King ought to be confessed, and to receive the Holy Sacrament, and that he knew him to be near his end. But the Physician told him, that he knew that as well as another, and that there was danger to speak to him of it, in regard he had been afraid of Death this half year, and that if he were spoken to about those matters, he would certainly die of fear. Nevertheless Lavardin spoke aloud to the King, that if he would be cured, he ought to make his Confession every week, and receive the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, and that his Father being an hundred years old, and sickly, had received his Health by that means. The King being persuaded, said, that he did agree to it, provided it was through a certain religious Friar, named brother Philip, ancient, and of a good Life, and who was noised to be Learned, and was Monk of the Abbey of Saint Martin. He being arrived, in confessing of him did remonstrate to him, he ought to ask pardon for all the Murders and Ravages which he had caused to be committed during his Life; and advised him, as far as was possible, to make recompense, where it could be done. Among other things, that those of the Franche conté complained, tho' they were almost all reduced to his Obedience, nevertheless his Soldiers committed the most detestable Insolences, that could be imagined; remonstrating unto him, that if God had spoken to his good Servant David, that he should never inhabit that glorious Temple, which he would build to his Dedication, because he had shed so much human blood by his Wars, and caused innumerable Acts of Hostility to be done; that God would therefore in this manner withdraw himself from the Holy Sacrament, which he would administer unto him, and condemn him to Damnation; wherefore he ought to cause his men to cease using any more such ways, and to restore the Taxes of the Kingdom to the same state he found them, for the People were extremely impoverished, and the most part of them dead through want. He answered, he was so far from repenting of those Ravagements and Saccages done in Burgundy, that he was extremely sorry, all the Land of the Duke of Burgundy was not in the same Estate; and as for the Taxes and Subsidies which he had impoposed on the People, as soon as he was cured of his Distemper (not else) that he would take them off; nothing else could be got from him. Wherefore seeing his Obstinacy, for fear he should die without Confession, and without having taken the Holy Sacrament, they prayed the good religious Friar to give him Absolution, and the Communion, which he did. (But I do not read, that he greased his Temples to make him slip easily through Purgatory.) Afterwards they gave him some small matter to eat, but he could not, by reason of a great stink, he said, which risen from his Body to his Brain; therefore he commanded they should smoak him with Perfumes, which they did a great while, and he gave up the Ghost in receiving of them; and behold (saith Guion) how he died smoked all over like an old Fox.  
8. His Physician jaques Cottier, after the death of the King, retired to his House, enriched with a yearly Revenue of five and twenty thousand Livers, the value of which was more at that time, than now thirteen or fourteen thousand pounds Sterling. It was certified by the return of the accounts of the Treasurers de l' Espargne, that he had received from them fourscore and eighteen thousand Crowns.  
9 Charles the Eighth, the supposed Son of the forementioned King, (for saith Mezeray, most People did suspect that he was suppositious) caused him to be prosecuted, to make Restitution of his Estate, as arising from Gifts excessive, and passing all Reason. But the King being busied in making ready for his Journey to Naples, and in raising of Money, Cottier gave him fifty thousand Crowns as Money lent, and so they let fall the Prosecution against him. His Consort the Barber, Olivier above spoken of, was hanged for Murder.  
10. The consequence of the preceding Relation will incline any sound Judgement to these Concessions. 1. That Princes, and other great Persons are not seldom served with the worst of Physicians, and that excessive Liberalities do not add so much vigour to their Care or Diligence, as growth to their Avarice; and its insatiability doth commonly draw a Disease into its greatest length; and so a string too far extended frequently breaking, unawares Death may be ushered in, and prove the purchase of transcendent Fees. 2. That the monstrous fame of the greatest Physicians is a chain of favourable, though erroneous Reports, linked from the Beggar to the Gentleman, and thence to the Prince. 3. That Priests or Jesuits, and Physicians uniting, have a most puissant ascendent on the faculties of the Soul and Body of the sick (whether they be the most illustrious, most noble, honourable, or ignoble) and thence deriving a despotic command over their Estates, Secrets, and Lives, are form into most exquisite Tools, to acquire, propagate, and establish unto his Popish Holiness an universal Empire over Christendom; who, to add a greater energy to these Organs, has marshaled both the one and the other, throughout all Italy, into separate Colleges of Jesuits and Physicians, knowing that vis unita est fortior. Behold then an instance of those two influences, how admirably they conspire into one effect. The Emperor Charles the Fifth, for over-matching Francis the First, was by the pious Arguments of a Frenchified Jesuit, authorized thereunto by his balancing Holiness, persuaded to quit his Throne for to enter into a Monastery, whence the Rays of his declining Glory still continuing a warmth in the Affections of his Spanish Subjects, had kindled a most fervent desire of having their Prince restored; but in prevention of this, to accelerate his course below their Horizon, the Jesuit Confessor redoubles his macerating penance of Vigilies, Ave Mary Lectures, and other Castigations. The Convent Physician substracts from his Diet, and depauperates his dried Limbs by Purgations; so that by the Harmony of these two State Instruments the most potent Monarch, and wisest Prince of that Century was very cursorily reduced to a materia prima. This was un trait achevi de la politic. Adrian the Emperor, as relateth Peter Messiah, was by his Physicians, whereof he had many, advised not to eat or drink, and being famished to death, died with the Expression of a common saying in his Mouth, Turba Medicorum interfecit ●egem, that is, a crowd of Physicians have killed the King.   

CHAP. XV.  
Of the secure and justifiable tantamount ways of poisoning and destroying.  
MOre are the ways that lead to the Gibbet, than to the Church; the antiquated venefick Methods are rendered obsolete, by the refined Invention of Circulation, through which barefaced, and by the light of the Sun, the same end is attained, as justifiable by innocency of the Medicines, as sinisterly imposed on the inadvertized populace. Suppose an elder Brother decumbent of a continual Fever; a dose or two of Extractum Rudun, (a Medicine in repute among Doctors and Patients) advised under the Hand and Seal of a gray-bearded Physician, smartly encouraged by Aurum portabile, in very few days answers the Expectation of the younger Brother, maliciously aspiring to the Succession of the first born. What pretence hath the Law, the Kindred, or clamour of the World against the Physician, or his Medicine, which in this case, and several others, doth as seldom miss, as the most celebrated Poison? Bleedings administered long after the first kindling of a Fever of the same kind, do as commonly give the fatal blow to the succumbing Spirits, without danger of a repartee from the Standards by. A Woman reduced to long weakness through continuance of opiniatre hysterick Fits, by the swallowing down of a strong purgative, though in a very small dose, especially if with Repetitions, is infallibly hastened to her Tomb; in which particular it is in the power of the Medico, to oblige the Husband, or Father in lesning his charge, without hazard of Reputation, or a necessity of giving an account to his Colleagues, or the World, of such Practice: for what in the Physician through ignorance, or error in Judgement, and in the Patients and Nurses, or Attendants, by reason of neglect, may extenuate the Crime, or hid the misfortune, is in the power of the Doctor to act intentionally, and wilfully, (when sufficiently gratified) and yet remain secure under the Pretences forementioned. To instance all the modes of giving Patients their dispatches, would be compiling a great Volume, and therefore conclude it sufficient to have given you just before that general caution, to which Particulars may easily be reduced.   

CHAP. XVI.  
The preceding Discourses being intermixed with various Digressions, to prevent your too tedious amusement on the same Subject, I proceed to examine the invalidity of the great number of simple Waters, which consequently will serve for Tools of doing nothing, and therefore are proper means to be used by the Art of Expectation.  
THE distilled Waters of borage, Bugloss, Endive, Cichory, Dendelion, Porslain, Lettuce, and the like, in taste, smell, and their other supposed qualities, do little or nothing exceed those of River water distilled, and operate less in cooling, moistening, and other requisites, than this last Element. And a Physician is in nothing more deceived, or imposes more grossly on his Patients, than in prescribing the distilled Waters of Oaken buds, Horstails, Plantain, Shepherd's purse, Milfoil, knot Grass, etc. for adstriction and repulsion, that quality being chief resident in their terrestrial parts, which never ascending so high as the Alembic head, cannot be thought to pass by distillation; wherefore the Prescriber is extremely unblamable for his error of Judgement, in not preferring the decoction of those simples, whereby their astringent qualities are apparently to the taste, communicated to the Liquor, in a degree as high or low as answers the proportion of the Ingredients. The same error is committed in the distillation of Comfrey, Mallows, Marshmallows, Snails, Muscles, Earthworms, and of all others, whose chief effects are performed by a lenifying smoothing mucilage, that can no other way be extracted, than by expression, or decoction; whereas the weight of these mucous Particles is an undoubted obstacle to their rising so high as the Alembic. Can any thing be more ridiculous, than to distil Nettles, ground Ivy, Fumitory, Agrimony, or Speedwell, whose superfluous insipid Phlegm is only collected in drops, to serve for no other use, than to fill up glasses, that are to be emptied at the next return of the spring into the Cannels? One ounce of the Juice of Nettles will in virtue overpower a gallon of the distilled water; a decoction or expression of ground Ivy, or Fumitory, in the quantity of a spoonful, contains more of the specific, than a Roundlet of their distilled moisture. Poppy water may justly be rejected, where one drop of Syrup of Poppy is enriched with more virtue, than a pint of the distilled Liquor. The deobstruent endowments of all bitter Herbs, as Wormwood, Succory, Elicampane, Hoarhound, and Germander, remain in the bottom of the Still, whilst the Liquor that's separated from them, is scarce good enough to wash hands. Sorrel, Lemon, Citron, Oranges, and other sour materials, will sooner be burnt, or affected with an empyreum in the bottom of the distilling Vessels, than throw up their acidity to the Alembic. The distillation of Ox dung doth better suit with the Employ of a Tom-t- d, than with the Profession of such noble Doctors, that have particularly inserted it in their grave Dispensatory. Can there be so much madness fixed in the belief of any Physic Doctor, or decrepit Nurse, that Water drawn by distillation from Swallows, or Magpyes, ever cured the falling Sickness, or any sort of Convulsions? The number of waters to be distilled, aught to be limited to such Vegetables, as partake of volatile Particles, and others, whose fragrant scent is transmigrable with their humidity; and the most necessary of these are so few, that ten, or a dozen, may for ready Vehicles, and other uses, over-suffise. To what purpose then do the Augustan Doctors in their Pharmacopoea, and in imitation of them others in theirs, command near a hundred simple Waters to be distilled, unless to make a Well of the Apothecary's Shop, to their needless trouble and charge, and yet grudge them to reimburs their damage in pouring of them into the sink every ensuing year, by charging their losses on the higher prizes of such Medicines, which they shall have opportunity of selling? so that in this sense it is not eleven pence in the Shilling profit, but rather twelve pence in the Shilling loss; for which the poor Apothecary that pays House-rent, scot and lot, is singularly obliged to their Doctorships.  
In the framing of the Pharmacopoea Hagiensis, I had my suffrage as fellow of that College of Physicians, and where it hath been my turn to be twice Dean or Precedent of the said Society, as you may read by Name in the printed Copies, which are sold among the Booksellers in London, as well as at the Hague. It was not in any single power to prevail against all the rest of the Colleagues, to reduce the twenty two only distilled simple Waters there inserted, to ten or eleven, which in my sentiment seemed abundance for all necessary Intentions; notwithstanding that Dispensatory, comparatively with others before, for smallness of number, election and correction of requisite Medicines, may challenge the first place with any other of ancienter edition, though it hath not escaped many of those errors, that all others are culpable of, as will be particularly instanced hereafter.  
The simple Waters drawn from the flowers of Rosemary, Lime-trees; Lavendel, Lilies of the Valley, Peony, and from other cephalick simples, forasmuch as their simple virtues do in no proportion balance the charge and trouble of their distillation, deserve no rank in a Dispensatory, especially in regard they are all contained in several compound Epileptic, and Apoplectic Spirits, where their faculties and powers are exalted, and copiously extracted by the means of Wine or Brandy, and may be allayed by the admixture of any temperate simple Water, to any degree you please.  
As for Spirits of spirituous Waters of Wormwood, Angelica, juniper, Orange-peel, Mint, Lemon-peel, and twenty more of the same class, are rather to be esteemed appurtenances of a Brandy shop, prepared to gratify the Palates of debauched Brandy drinkers, whereas Spirits drawn from two or three choice epileptics and apoplectics, shall answer all indications more powerfully and agreeably to Nature, without such frustraneous Multiplications, according to the two memorable Edicts of Philosophers, E●tia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitated. Frustra fit per plura, quod fieri potest p●r pauciora. To leave in the bottom of the distilling Vesse● the most powerful Particles of the Ingredients of Aqua Hysterica, after a faint stinking water has been abstracted from them, is the greatest Indiscretion; whereas the infusing or digesting in Spirits of Wine four or five of the most Energick Simples by way of Tincture, a● Aristoloch. Rot. Bac. Sambuc. Puleg. Myrrh. and Cort. Aurant. would partake more Virtues in half an ounce, than doth the distilled water in a pint. Neither can I well perceive the pretence of Bryony to the discussing of hypochondriac, or as they falsely term them, hysteric Vapours; being a nauseous violent Emetic and Cathartic, which rather seems appointed with qualities to excite and irritate such offensive Ebullitions and Exufflations.  
What wonder the Juice of Celondine, and one or two very ungrateful Spices among the rest, can produce in Aqua Mirabilis, is not so great a wonder to me, as the folly of those that composed it.  
The Aqua Coelestis, Imperialis, Theriacalis, frigida Saxoniae, Gilbert●, and other compound Waters are most of ●em tautalogical the one with the other, and abounding with all the absurdities you will read hereafter in the just censure of Venice Treacle, and other Remarks upon composites.  
Whatever laudable effects hath been performed by the Aqua Quercetani, are only imputable to the Therebinthin; the other Ingredients, as Sem. Lactucae and agni Casti, etc. (as will appear in the disprobation of the Syrup of Chastity) being idle and of no signification.  
Nothing argues greater Stupidity, than not to believe, there is more virtue in a spoonful of Capon's broth, than in a gallon of Aqua Caponis; wherefore, exceptis Medicis nihil stultius Grammaticis.  
What can come nearer to madness, than the commending Aqua scordii composita, being a meet Phlegm attended with a fainty nauseous smell, more noisome to the Spirits than the steem of a Dunghill.  
Epidemic water requires several Animadversions. 1. Scorzonera roots retaining little that is volatile, yields less of an Alexipharmac and antifebril in distillation, than Barley flower or Oatmel. 2. The Pyony root possessing the total of its prime virtues in weighty terrestrial parts, continueth its residence in the bottom of the gourge, without parting with more than an invalid steem. 3. Besides scents of an ill hue, and some strong heating oily Particles of the Cephalicks, I cannot discern any thing material in the Composition for the purpose. 4. The Fountain water mixed with the best Spirits of Wine, is labour and cost lost, in not exchanging it for good Nantes Brandy, or Spirit of Wine not rectified. So that this empirical medley is much resembling all the rest, described in vulgar Dispensatories. 5. The faeces or Residence of this and Treacle-water is left possessed of what can be supposed excellent in those Compositions. Distilled Spirits of Wormwood retain only what's the most offensive and nauseous part of that Herb, leaving what is most useful, as all other bitters, in the bottom of the Still.   

CHAP. XVII.  
Of Medicinal Vinegers and Wine; also of Emetic Wines.  
1. WHether for use of the Kitchen, or the Apothecary's Shop, so many sorts of Vinegars are introduced, is but a civil question. Elder Vinegar the Cooks impropriate to their share, leaving Rosemary Vinegar, Treacle-Vineger, and the rest to the Physic Doctors, among whom there is scarce one in a hundred, that in the whole course of his Practice ever prescribed a drop, unless to smell unto, or apply 〈…〉 particular inflamed part, in form of an Oxycrat, which of late years hath been wholly rejected. To what end then is the Shop burdened with them? If any young Physickster has an itch to experiment once in his life time, whether Squil Vinegar deserves those lying Marvels Galen adscribes to it, the Medicine may (pro re nata) be well enough prepared without an Insolation of forty days. And when he shall be fully satisfied of its Sublimities, he will have no great appetite to essay Vinun S●●illiticum, especially in those that are amorous, who desire to avoid a stinking Breath, and a loathsome Medicine, and wherefore then foisted into the Dispensatory?  
2. Any man of sense will be contented with the sole and safe use of Vinum benedictum, without running the risk of a Vinum Helleboratum, Rubellum, or Antimoniale, which too oft have thrown Patients into dreadful Convulsions; and let me be their Remembrancer of Hypocrates his Aphor. 1. Lib. 5. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. Death that so oft has been an attendant of white Hellebore, is not so much the consequent of an Hypercatharisis, and an extreme Inanition or Siccity, as of a venomous quality, that contorts the whole Systeme of the Nerves, and poisons the Brain; Why then must this poisonous Medicine take its place in the Dispensatory?  
3. I cannot without laughter take notice of the Mace, that's added to the Infusion of Crocus Metallorum, and the Cloves to the Vitrum Antimonii, and yet the Regulus Antimonii, which is as great a Devil as either of them, is accompanied with neither Mace, Cloves, Nutmegs, nor Cinnamon in the Vinum Antimoniale. As for the Cloves and Mace, either their office is intended to be a corrector of the Antimony, or a corroborator of the Stomach; if the first, they are under a mistake, for ten drams of Mace is not so much a corrector to an ounce of Antimony, as one grain of Saltpetre. If they pretend to strengthen the Stomach, than they hinder the Operation of the Medicine, which is to weaken, irritate, and provoke the Stomach, to let go its hold of those slimy or choleric Humours that oppress it; whereas to strengthen the Stomach is to contract moderately its Fibres, by the adstringent quality of those Spices, whereby at the same time the humours are bound up, and packed in close, all which is contrary to the intention of vomiting. If you are fearful, that the Stomach is very weak, give less of the Medicine, and then my most worthy Kindred, after the operation of throwing up the load of vicious Humours, approach with a good burnt Claret, wherein your Mace, Cloves, or Cinnamon, will do you Service. Pray consider; Suppose you thought fit in your Wisdoms to advise a vomit of warm water and Salad Oil, should you order Cinnamon or Mace to be boiled in it, the very Nurses, and all the Boys of the Parish would laugh at you. What, Cloves and Mace in a Vomitory? This is thrusting from you, and pulling to you, all at once. This is a Maxim the Rustics will oppose, without the help of Logic. Wherefore I do offer to take the blame upon me, if henceforward the Apothecaries leave those Indian Aromaticks out of these or the like Medicines. Moreover know, that Minerals are to be disrobed of their Venom, smoothed of immoderate roughness, and corrected, before they enter into the Body, by Tonitruation, Sublimation, Precipitation, or Digestion.  
4. Have these Physicksters ever had the good fortune to recover sight in a blind man by Eye-bright Wine, or to strengthen a weak Brain by Rosemary Wine? Vulgar Experience asserts Wine hurtful to the Eyes and Brain, both which have too oft been drunk out by that Liquor. Away with them for shame out of all Dispensatories.  
I had almost forgot to mention the Inconveniency of the Infusion of Crocus Metallorum, that after long keeping it looseth its virtue, and oft misseth in its vomitive Operation, which is endeavoured to be prevented by letting the Wine stand upon the Antimony, and now and then giving it a gentle shake. This not restoring it to its former virtue, an Oxymel Vomitivum will not only obviate that desect, but by means of the Vinegar correct the exorbitant faculty of that Mineral, quicken it in Operation, and attenuate the gross slimy Humours. So that in my Opinion all the recited Vomitories ought to be expunged, and this remain the only substitute. As for the simple Waters, all aught to be discarded to eight or nine, these medicated Vinegers exterminated, except the acetum destillatum, and the physical Wines abandoned to those, whose Palates will judge them grateful.   

CHAP. XVIII.  
Of the Medicinal Syrups, and Conserves.  
1. WAter vyeth with the Earth for the lower most Seat, but in the Physick-shop it possesseth the highest next the Ceiling, and the Region immediate to this is the Dominion of the Wasps and Flies, haunting the Syrup-pots, the chief Ornament and Note of Distinction of the Trade. Next give me leave to inquire into their inside and contents; not of all of them, for that would more fit an Atlas; but of such as are most in use, and equally senseless. The intent of converting Simples into Syrups, is to preserve them the Winter over, when they are not to be had green; or to render them more grateful; or for the sake of their ready form to be dissolved in any Potion, Decoction, or Julep. In relation to the first, most useful Herbs or Roots may be had in the hardest Season, if not in their greatest vigour, yet in their greatest decay they do yield more powerful virtues to a Decoction, than what can be supposed in a Syrup, which is nothing but a decoction or expression of Juices, whose most energic Particles are boiled or evaporated away to a sediment and slime, which then is to be inspissated by a further Ebullition, through the addition of a sufficient proportion of Sugar, into a Syrup. Herewith the Stomach is to be clogged, injured, and diseased, by its turning four and corrosive, as all Sugars and sugared Medicines, be they Syrups, Lohoches, Lozenges, or the like, generally do. Moreover, many Vegetables being preserved dry, some are thereby exalted in virtue, and others not much debased. As to the matter of gratefulness, such as retain a fragrancy in their scent, seem most proper for Syrups, to be prepared without Ebullition; namely, Roses, Gillyflowers, Violets, etc. The last intimating the readiness for Solution, a sufficient reason for asserting the necessity of Syrups, may be admitted in Syrupus de meconio or diacodium, some Purgative Syrups, (appropriated to Children, and such whose Palates must be courted by the sweetness of Sugar) and a smoothing lenifying Syrup, as of Mashmallows; in fine, eight or ten Syrups may be sufficiently capable to satisfy all necessary intents and purposes. Moreover, that in many Syrups, Honey being endued with healing, balsamic, gently detersive, and diuretic Faculties, aught to be preferred before Sugar, needs no further Arguments to procure the ascent of any rational Physician.  
2. Leaving generals, I ought to descend to the examination of Particulars, where beginning with the letter A seems most methodical. Syrupus de Agno ca●●o, or Syrup of Chastity, intended questionless in disfavour of Nuns and Friars, to abate the career of their galoping Lust; but as by wonderful Providence we are delivered of their vicious Company, so the description of this Syrup ought to be razed by their Physickships out of their Pharmaceutic Records. However, I may be positive, though the Ephesian Doctor had used pounds of it in his Porridg, it would have as little hindered the operation of his sympathetick purge, in some Constitutions, as a few grains of Cantharideses in others, which is quite contrary. That Endive, Lettuce and Porcelain should be Copartners with agnu● castus in the mischief of suppressing the propagation of mankind, is oppositely attested by most Germane and French, who throughout the whole year graze abundantly upon it, and nevertheless attain to a numerous Issue. Hempseed, another ingredient, by affording a copious strong juice to Pigeons, occasions them to breed more frequently than otherwise. The broths of Lentils and Corianderseeds, the basis of all the rest, is beyond all dispute a strong provocative. Since their attempt in this kind proves so ridiculous, I will offer to 'em a most infallible Remedy against Petulancy. Let the Patiented exercise at the Spade in a tough piece of ground from morning until night, then give him a half pint of thin Water-gruel with a few crumbs of bread for Supper, this Method continued for eight of ten days, I do warrant will perform an absolute cure, without the least drop of their Syrup of Chastity.  
3. Syrups are very frustraneously multiplied, that are filled almost with the same Ingredients, and yet intended for divers purposes; as Syrup of Mugwood, and Syrup of ground Pine, the former offering at the provoking of the Menstrua in Women, the latter at the curing the Gout, and all other Arthritick Distempers in Men; as if the cause of the suppression of the Catemenia were the same, that causes the Gout; can any thing be more senseless? But these Syrups consist of a strong brigade of simples as ill ranked and filled as ever I yet beheld. If nothing will satisfy besides a Syrup, one made of Elicampane roots, Pennyroyal and Myrrh, shall exceed the former a thousand degrees, with the twentieth part only of the trouble and charge.  
4. To what purpose shall the decoction in the preparation of Syrup of Mashmallows be clogged with Pellitory, Mallows, Plantain, Maidenhair, Asparagus, Grass roots, Raisins, and all the eight sorts of cold Seeds, that shall choke and hinder the main operation of the Mashmallow roots and Cicers, which is to widen, relax, render slippery, and gently throw off. In lieu of all this Garbage make a strong decoction of Mashmallow roots, red Cicers, and English Liquorish, boil them into a Syrup with the best Honey. But if you add to the Liquor in the boiling a hundred or two of Sows or Mille●edes tied up in a rag, you will have a Syrup, that in a fresh Scent, Taste, and Virtues shall surpass all the Syrups of that kind, that ever were invented. And having this Syrup, what occasion is there for Syrup of Liquorish, Isop, Jujubees, Mucilages, or other pectoral Syrups, when it is in your power to advise ex tempore and pro re nata a pulmonic decoction of inciding, and abstersive Vegetables, or such as answer your Indication, and edulcorate it with the foresaid Syrup, if necessary. Likewise all Loho●hs are needless, since they can easily be otherwise supplied. To insert Syrups de Rosis Si●●is, Myrtinus, and de consolida is super vacaneous, where one of them will suffice in a decoction, that you shall order for your purpose; unless his Physic Hogship by a tautology of Compounds intends to puzzle the Apothecary, and impose on his Opinion, there is a mystery in composition, which shall limit his attempt of imitating the Physician, and so secure the Practice of Physic to himself.  
5. If Syrup of Rhubarb is designed for nice Palates, and Children, the Rhubarb ought to be left out, than which nothing is more ungrateful, especially where the Stomach is foul. Is it not a supererogatory folly to add Violet Flowers, as if that in clogging the Menstruum were not detrimental? But to command the infusion to be made in Betony, Cichory, and Bugloss Waters, where good spring Water acuated with Salt of Tartar is infinitely more proper, and less chargeable, is want of Judgement. Here Cinnamon may well be omitted, where the Ginger will much better supply its place.  
6. Touching Conserves, and Candids, the twentieth part of those set down in the Augustan Dispens. will overdo, the Reasons are the same I have already given you, in the Discourse touching Syrups and Sugar.   

CHAP. XIX.  
Of the Idleness of Compound Dispensatory Powders.  
1. THE Aromaticum Caryophyllatum, Pulvis Elect. Rosat. Novel. M●suae, and Rosatum Gabrielis are without all doubt very excellent to dry the Hair, and may be more serviceable for Barbers than Physicians, they scarce using them in weakness of the Stomach once in seven years. The second containing about half a hundred Ingredients, and very ill put together, may easily be outdone by Zedoary, Cinnamon, and red Roses.  
Crabs Eyes, or Pearl prepared and used singly and jointly, I have ever found to equal the Virtues of all the Ingredients in the mixture of Pulvis è chelis cancrorum composu●s. But the addition of toasted raw Silk, the fragments of Sapphir, and Emeralds, and of the bone of a Stag's Heart, to the Species Cordiales, is a most senseless Superstition, never received into the belief of the least rational, except Physicians.  
2. The greater and lesser cold Seeds contracting a rancour in a short time, and the subtle smell of the Flowers of Buglos, Water Lilies, and Violets, soon evaporating being powdered, and thence consequently resolved into powder of Post; what folly can be greater, than to expect from them a Cordial virtue in the Pulvis Diamargaritôn frigidus,? Even the white and yellow Saunders, also Myrtleberries in the same Composition, contribute nothing cordial besides bulk. So that these and a hundred more such like jumbles can take place in a Dispens. no otherwise, than Expectation Medicines.  
3. What Sympathy to the Heart can be breathed from an Elcks hoof, the most abject excrement of that Animal; or from a Stag's Heart-bone, not much differing from any other bone of the same Beast, except in the singularity of number; or from an Unicorns horn, a sort of an Ass, which the horn of an Ox, or Goat may contend with in Virtue, though not in rarity; or from leaf Gold (much less from leaf Silver) which undigested passeth without casting the least ray of its lustre; or from bowl armene, terra lemnia, precious stone Fragments, or Amber, whose weight or stickyness doth empower them to clog and oppress the Stomach; or from Sorrel Seeds, that usually escape the force of the Pestle, and therefore as they enter whole into any Composition, so they slide whole through the body when inwardly taken; or from Endive Seeds, and twenty more like the forementioned, and yet all of them in greater or lesser numbers, are added to some Cordial Powder or other in Pharmacop●●a's; as in the Pulvis Bezoarticus, Pulvis confectionis liberantis Augustan. Pulvis pannonicus ruber, species Cardiac. M. Species Card. temp. Augustanorum Diamarg. frig. and several others. Moreover any one of these forenamed compound supposedly Cordial Powders containing the Virtues and Faculties of all the rest, to what end is the Apothecary needlessly to be charged with the preparation of four or five of them, and his Shop burdened with so many Species Glasses? A Cordial properly and per se is that, which hath power suddenly to increase the dissipated and vanquished Spirits, or to corroborate the relaxt languishing texture of the Heart; and can any one, except a Physician, have so depraved a Fancy, as not to think, there is more of Cordial in a Spoonful of good Broth, or a few drops of Spirits of Wine, than in an ounce of such unproportioned ●op Cordial Powders? I cannot but repeat, Excepti● medicis, Grammaticis nihil stultius. That the pretended subduing of malignant or pestilential Steems, and febril Matter, whereby the Heart is singularly relieved by these precited Powders, whence they merit the Title of Cordial, is urged as a reply, may be foreseen, though easily obviated, by asserting those effects per accidens; and consequently Vomitories and Purgatives may justly be listed in the Roll of Cordials, forasmuch as they remove vicious Humours, which per protopatheiam or deuteropatheiam affect and disease the Heart; all which is mere Physic Cant.  
4. As for Pulvis diamosc. d. and A●ar. Dianthos Nicholai, and diambra Mesuae do rather weaken, and deject the animal faculty much more than a compound Saxifrage, or a hodge pot mashmallow Powder can be experienced to fail in their efforts against Stone or Gravel; or the Pulvis Antilyssos Palmarii against the bite of a mad Dog, and an Hydrophobia.  
5. Among all the rest of those Empirical Dispens. Powders recommended me to the Species Diarrbodon Abbatis Nicholai Mirepsi for an idle and incongruous Composition; and if you will deduce the virtues of it from its contrary Ingredients, it shall prevail against abundance of Diseases. The Pearl and Stag's heart bone do appropriate it to Diseases of the Heart, Camphir to the Plague, and the greater cold Seeds to the Kidneys. The Rhapontic speaks its excellency against the Scurvy, Juice of Liquorish against a Cough, red Roses, Mastic, and the Saunders against all bleedings, and all sorts of loosnesses, and the Spices against Winds, Faintnesses, Dropsies, stoppage of Urine, etc. I dare be bold to say, that a Mountebank cannot set up with a more cheating Medicine against all Diseases, were not the trouble and extraordinary charge a main impediment to such an undertaking. Great was the Fool that invented it, and far greater Fools are they, that caused it to be recording in their Dispensatories some hundred of years after.  
Moibanus upon Dioscorides puts a great cheat on the succeeding Ages in recommending pulvis Saxonicus against the Plague, which of all others by the mezereon shall cause a most burning Plagu● in the Throat; Stomach, and Guts.   

CHAP. XX.  
Detecting the most senseless, gross and absurd Errors in the Composition of Venice Treacle, and Mithridate, also of the other Narcotic Medicines.  
1. WHat means such a Troop of Electuaries in Dis. against Winds, weaknesses of the Heart, Stomach, Lungs, Spleen, Kidneys, and Testicles, when under other heads and forms such a train of Physic Artillery hath already been provided against them? Actum agere, entia multiplicare, and per plura facere must certainly be the delight of Physicians. I shall pass most of 'em, the same Reasons and Remarks set down before, serving to confute their necessity, and demonstrate their grossest Absurdities. The Autid. Haemagog. is such a one; that Gog nor Magog can never unriddle the Mystery of its Composition. I perfectly know, that it performs least, what it is intended for. The Alom, Ginger, Pellitory of Spain, Capers bark, Elicampane, Pyony, Liquorish, Pepper, Lupin flower, and thirty more varieties in it will compound a mash fit for Infernals, than for Horses, much less for sick men.  
2. I do aver, that Diatessaron is a Compos. a million of degrees beyond Venice Treacle, or Mithridate, both which Physicians will have to ride Admiral and Vice-Admiral over all their wretched Squadrons of Compounds. One monstrous Thunderbolt of a Medicine will not serve turn, there must be a pair. And that they shall be exactly prepared at Paris, their Wisdoms have thought fit to depute a brace or two of Censorious Coxcombs to visit the Treacle and Mithridate Pots in the Shops. And doth one Paris Physician in a hundred know all the Simples when he seethe them? I dare be confident not one in forty is acquainted with the faces of the tenth art of them. But what if the Agaric, Gum Arabic, and seven or eight more, should be left out by the Artist, can you believe, the sight, scent, and taste of those Physicksters could discover it? No more than an Apothecary can tell, what young Doctor made the last addresses to his Wife in her Bedchamber. The Venetian Magistrates and Physicians well knowing, that nothing can prevent Fallacies or Counterfeits of such thrice noble Medicines, unless they see all the Ingredients prepared singly, and renged in several Classes, they never fail being present at the jumbling of them together, and affixing their Seal to their true mixture, to serve for a Traffic all Europe over.  
3. A Lion, a Bear, Tiger, Wolf, Cat, Dog, and a hundred wild Beasts more being put together, could not make a greater howling in the Air, than all those untamed Simples in Mithridate and Treacle would do in the Stomach, if the Opium that's among them did not quiet their Fury, and bridle their Enormity. The Experiment of this observe is evident in Mathews' Pill, where the poisonous effort of the white Hellebore upon the Stomach is by the Opium bound up, by clouding the vital and animal Spirits, until it's passed into the Guts, when and where the Narcotick Virtue being spent, that malignant vegetable is at liberty, to vent the remainder of its force upon the Intestins, in moving of Stools.  
4. Give me leave to examine into the merits of these so highly blazoned Composts, and begin with the greater worthy of the twine, Venice Treacle, preferred above all others, either because prepared with an exactness extraordinary, attested by the Venetian Seal, as I have observed before, or by reason that the Italian Vipers are reputed of greater force, than those brought hither from New England. The Name of Treacle, or Theriaca it desumes from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, a wild Beast, either because Vipers are the chief Ingredients, or because its virtue is most signal incuring the bites of wild Beasts. It oweth its Invention to Andromachus, Physician to Nero, whence you may compute its very old Age, and remark how the Tradition of so many hundred years is arrived to Physicians in the most assured report of its infallible prevalence (according to Galen) against the greatest Diseases, particularly against the falling Sickness, Stone, Dropsy, Coughs, Phtisick, spitting of Blood, Swooning, Leprosy, Gout, Madness from the bite of a mad Dog, all Poisons, Plague, Colic, plague of the Guts, many Diseases peculiar to Women, and a hundred more. No wonder, if this mixture was called the Queen regent over all Medicines, and only worthy to reign in the Closets of Emperors, by whom it was caused to be prepared with the greatest cost and trouble. How little those Virtues can be expected from it, and how so vast a charge of those Emperors in sending for some of the Ingredients over all Asia is expended in vain; and how senseless and empirical the Composition is, will easily appear from the following Considerations. 1. That consisting of very many, if not all, contrary Ingredients, the one must necessarily destroy the other. 2. That Treacle being a Composition within a Composition of several of the same Materials, many of them are very foolishly repeated, as in the Trochisci Hedychroi are received Rad. Phu. Pontic. costi, cinnamon. Shaenanth. Opobalsam. Cassia Lign. Malabathrum, Nardus indicus, Myrrh. Crocus, and Amomum; all which are also again mentioned in the body of the Description. 3. Observe the mixture of Purgatives, as Rhubarb, Agaric, Sem. Thlaspios Sagapenum, Opopanax, Chalcanthum Rubefactum, a vomitive and purgative, etc. with Adstringents, as red Roses, Hypocistis, Acacia, Pentaphyllon; consider further these Adstringents joaked with their opposites, Alexipharmacks, Diaphoreticks, and Diuretics; as Vipers, dictamnum cretieum, Petroselinum Macedonicum, Sem. dauci cret, Foenic. ses. Ammeos: Therebinth, etc. next here must be Detergers, Cephalicks, Pectorals, hysterics, Stomachicks and Spleneticks, Gums, Resins, Earth's, all sorts of Spices, etc. The Basis is a Spanish Sea Onion, or Squil baked in a crust of Wheat, and consequently exceeding in weight all the other Ingredients singly. But take notice also, that Pepper and Opium together make an equal poise with the forementioned Scallion. Is not Venice Treacle standing on such a Basis likely to be framed into an incomparable Gallimophory, especially where old decayed Viper Cakes, and long Pepper are equally supporters of the mighty Electuary. The ill order, weight, disproportion, and dissonance of such a multiplicity of Ingredients cannot be paralleled with any thing but itself, and its Sister Mithridate. Take a mad man out of Bethlehm, who hath the humour of mixing upon him, open all the Drawers, Pots, and Glasses of the Physic Shop unto him, it will not be possible for him to make a more irrational jumble, and which shall not equal all the Virtues of Venice Treacle, provided a proportionable weight of Opium be added by any of a little more sense than the Bethlemite.  
5. Suppose half a score Ingredients more, as Nutshells powdered, Ass' bones calcined, scraping of Trenchers, and the like, be added to the mixture; or that the same number of Simples be substracted, be they Pentaphyllon, Calaminth, Viper Cakes, or almost which you please, conditionally, that the Opium be proportioned according to the substraction or addition, will you not believe, the Composition shall be gifted with the same Endowments and Qualities; or that it is not possible, for you or any man else not present at the jumble, to know, or conjecture, what is wanting, or what is thrown in?  
6. Next examine the nature of the Ingredients. That the Stomach from the corrosive burning and cutting Qualities of the Squils is apt to be ulcerated, is attested by Dioscorides, whereunto the pretended corrective of Orobus, or bitter fetch flower gives a helping hand, whose violence, according to the same Dioscorides and Galen, consists in an extreme bitterness, and a faculty of causing a bloody Urinal, and a bloody Flux, with the attendance of Convulsive gripes. These are the prime Jewels to bedeck the Queen of Medicines, among which the calcined Copperas is not the least, a Mineral fit for a galled horse's back, or the Farsie, a demi-poison promoting suffocating Vomits, and torminous stools. The Rhubarb is asserted by the Vouchers of Treacle to be added to strengthen the Liver, and Agarick to comfort the Brain; an absurdity condemned by the experience of all mankind, that ever purgatives should be corroboratives. But they pretend to excuse the injuries of those pernicious Simples by their small proportion, which they insinuate cannot signify much to so great a mass as the whole Composition amounts to. The same reason may as justly indemnify the addition of a dram or two of Arsenic or Ratsbane, Wolf-bane, and the like. To blow your nose into a man's Porridg can do no hurt, because the quantity is little, is a parallel way of reasoning, and of all men only peculiar to Physicians. But let me tell you, the proportion is great, if you join them together, thus: of Agaric an ounce and half, Rhubarb six drams, burned Copperas half an ounce, Sagapenum, Opopanax, Galbanum etc. all which being purgatives, make a strong party. Imagine, that a patiented in a malignant Fever had by advice taken a dose of Venice Treacle, to expel the malignity, which failing in the intended effect, he happens to die; The Physician, should he by accident come to the knowledge, that the Treacle wanted an Ingredient or two, as juice of Liquorish, Orrice, or any other of less moment, the Hog would most certainly impute the death of the Patient to the defective Composition. In conclusion, Treacle is no other, than a most confuse, absurd and senseless Opiate, which in all its pretences would be outdone beyond comparison, by a mixture of of three or four, as Virg. Serpentary roots, Scordium, Bole armene, and Opium, reduced with Honey into an Electuary; or Angelica r. Terra sigil. Gentian, and Opium mixed with Honey. The Extract of Hartshorn, Dictamnum Cret. and Opium is also an equivalent. Great is the superstition of the Indians in the worship of their Pagode Devils, deformed with monstrous horns, but a million greater is the superstition of Physic Idolaters, that believe it the greatest Sacrilege to diminish the least tittle from a Composition, as Sorrel-seeds, Pepper, and Ginger from Diascordium, or Pellitory of Spain from the Philonia; the precious fragments and Stags-bone out of Confectio de Hyacintho; the neglect of rejecting of all these particulars doth demonstrate Physicians to have longer Ears than Asses. To roast Saffron in an Eggshell to improve its virtues, is another Argument of their Sagess in the description of Elect. de Ovo. The Additaments of Pellitory of Spain, and Pepper to correct the extreme coldness of Opium in the Philonia, is another foolish notion, they cannot be driven from.  
7. To what purpose is the description of so many idle Opiates; as Philonium Persicum, Romanum, Requies Nicholai, Nepenthes, Pil. de Cynoglosso etc. when Opium dissolved and digested with Spirit of Wine, with or without Saffron, and used in drops, or evaporated to a Pill, is beyond all the imaginary correctives, which it doth not stand in need of, since the only danger it can threaten is oversleeping into a Coma, Lethargy, Carus, or death; and that is no other way to be prevented, than in omitting giving of it to those, that are not judged proper to take it, or to exhibit it to others in less quantity, than it can be presumed to exceed in operation; for tho' you surround Opium with all the spices of the Indies, to guard nature from its violence, if you give too much, it will not fail to kill, or extremely to frighten the standers by with a posture of the patiented very like unto death; and if you judge, that advising very little of it in Phthisicks, or great Weaknesses, be a sufficient warrant, you will find yourselves deceived, as those have been, which I mentioned in the Conclave of Physicians. I pass by taking notice of the purgative Electuaries, whose Absurdities in Composition we shall sufficiently detect in the Pill Boxes.   

CHAP. XXII.  
Reflections upon the erroneous and absurd Compositions of Dispersatory Pills.  
1. IF for those unaccountably erroneous Compositions of Treacle, Mithridate, Pil. Aloephanginae, Foetidae, and the rest, the Inventors ought to be censured great Idiots seventeen hundred years ago, the Approvers and Confirmers of 'em a thousand years after may be inferred greater Fools, but those that subscribe to the continuance of 'em at this day, must be concluded the greatest Fools; as if the excellency of Remedies consisted in Compofition, and the more of Composition there is, the greater Virtues it contributes to the Medicine.  
2. That this is the rule, whereby to measure the Capacity of the Artist, appears in the endeavours of Physicians to prescribe long Bills, filled with Composition, and by how much the more it is compounded, by so much the more the Apothecary judges the Prescriber the best Physician. On the contrary, the fewer Ingredients the better Medicine, which occasions less trouble and charge in the Preparation, and more certainty in the Effect; for where a Remedy consisteth of an hundred Ingredients, to which of 'em can you attribute the effect if successful, or the fault and damage if the Disease be thereby rendered worse? But such hath been the fallacia non causae pro cause in Physicians, that having prescribed to Patients against Diseases of the Eyes, Pil. Cochiae maj. and finding Success, and a laudable Event, infer thence very deceitfully, that their particular Composition doth arrogate specifically an Eye or Sight restoring power beyond all others; whereas it's to the virtue of the Purgatives, chosen according to the strength and other circumstances of the Patient, and without any correctives or Conductors, those good effects are to be imputed.  
3. The same reason confutes the specific relation of Pil. de Agarico to the Lungs; Aggregativae, de Tribus, and Imperiales to all the Bowels; Aureae and Lucis to the Eyes; de Eupatorio to the Liver; Diambrae, Macri, and de Succino to the Brain; Tartareae Q. to the Spleen; the aloe lota, Aloephanginae, Stomachicae, and Ruffi to the Stomach; Stomachicae cum gummi to the Stomach and Spleen; de hiera cum Agarico, and Mastichinae to the Stomach, Lungs and Brain; foetidae, de Opopanace, and de Hermodactylis to the Joints, and other gouty Diseases; Mechoacannae and de Gutta Gamandra to Dropsies; the Styrace to sharp thin Distillations on the Lungs.  
4. Pause a while, and with me consider the depth of folly of Mankind, the more astonishing, for as much as it is signally remarkable in those, who by the study of their whole Life-time, and the pretended Learning derived from the Experience of thousands of years, are advaned no further, than by giving Credit to lying Antiquity, to receive such idle absurd superfluous and pernicious Compositions into the Pharmacopoea, and what is worse, to impose the use of 'em upon the Physicians of a whole Nation, is a perfect Physic Popery, and Inquisition, damning all those, that are gifted with too much Knowledge and Honesty to submit to their Fopperies, as Popery anathematizes such, whose light of reasoning, of conviction of Conscience will not be subjected to their impious Indulgences, ridiculous Purgatory, and blind idolatrous Worship. And as Luther was the first▪ that succeeded in the detecting the antiquated follies of whole centuries of Ages, the chief scope whereof was no other, than by an usurped Dominion over the Consciences of Men, and detaining of them in that blind slavery to triumph over the Liberties of their Persons, and enrich themselves by the high prizes of their Indulgencies, Pardons, and other most wicked Devices, whereunto their fulminatory Bulls, and cursed Excommunications, especially at the hour of Death, are so greatly instrumental. And why is't not equally probable, that any honest and discerning Judgement may with the same Success, and Perspicuity of Argument expose, and detect the grossest of Errors and Absurdities in Physic, continued by the unreasonable and tyrannising power assumed by Conclaves of Physicians, to no other end than to domineer over the Lives of Men, and to enrich themselves out of their Estates, by enslaving their Opinions to their mischievous Compositions, and most senseless Prescriptions?  
5. The minute courge, that some few years ago incited me to correct Extractum Rudii, by throwing off the Pulvis Diarrhodon Abbatis, that idle non-corrective, and substitute an aromatic or two, as you may read in my House Apothecary, was an attempt, that never durst enter the thought of any Physician before me, though soon after was imitated by a whole Society in their Pharmacopoea.  
6. What means the addition of Mastic, horehound, Sarcocol, and Myrrh to the Purgatives in Pil. de Agarico, since the former in their virtues are overruled and drowned by the latter, and their mutual reaction not only breaks the force of each other, but clogs the Composition into too large a bulk. The same reason is much more prevalent against the inspissated Juices of Agrimony, Motherweed, Polypody, Mastich, red Roses, Epithymum, Anis Seeds, and Ginger in de description of Pilulae Aggregativae. The Myrobalans being so weak a Purgative, are rather used for their adstringent faculty, and therefore aught to be rejected hence, as also the red Roses and Mastich, which by their adstriction do hinder, and retard the purgative Faculties of the chief Ingredients. The Office of Anis-seeds, and Ginger is to discuss the Winds or Flatuosities, which the Cathartic Ebullition causes; or rather those ensuing Gripes owe their original to sharp vellicating Humours, thrown off by the Purgatives upon the Guts, which the hot fiery Particles of the Ginger, and Anis-seeds do extremely provoke, and increase, and therefore ought be shut out.  
7. To speak plain, the proper Assistant to Nature upon the taking a Purge, which in effect is the true corrective of Purgatives, is some time after the Cathartic hath been swallowed down, to take a Bovillon Maugre, or lean Broth made of Mashmallow-roots, or young Mallow-leaves, Endive, and Borrage or Bugloss, with a little fresh Butter, and three or four grains of Salt dissolved in it; or Posset-drink with a little Butter and Salt may also be used instead of the Bovillon. The Butter by its oily parts rendering the Stomach and Guts smooth and slippery, and lining the Guts to defend them from the acrimony of the preterfluent incensed Humours, the mucilaginous and emollient parts of the Herbs assisting in the precipitating the Purgative, together with the Humours out of the Stomach and Guts, and conspiring with the Butter in the defence of the membranous parts, the Salt by gentle Stimulation spurring the Fibres of the Stomach and Guts to Expulsion, these are the proper Defensives and Correctives of a purgative Medicine, though proving so violent as to be suspected of a malignant faculty, as Scammony, Colocynthis, Hellebore, Gialap, Gum. Gut. etc.  
8. The uniting of Purgatives supplying reciprocally each others defects, and the additament of one out of three or four sorts of Salt for a corrective, is the only right and suitable way of cathartic Composition, whereby the forecited Inconvenients are precluded. Thus the flowness of Aloes is quickened by the prompt Operation of Scammony and Colocynthis, the roughness and emetic quality of which latter, and of all others is smoothed and precipitated by some sort or other of fixed Salt, which to Turbith, Hermodactyls, Gum. Gut. etc. doth impart the same advantage.  
9 Most sorts of Dispens. compounded cathartic Pills exhibited in a just dose, do nevertheless in many Constitutions cause most dreadful Oppressions on their Stomaches, because they are empirically mixed, and clogged with Ingredients foreign to the Intention, and with adstringent Spices, that forcibly detain them in the Stomach.  
10. Turbith, Hermodactyls, My●obalans, Sem. Carthami, Epithym. Gum Ammoniac, Opopanax, Sagapen. and the like, mixed only with Aloes and its supposed Correctives, is most certainly against the right reasoning of Composition, and thwarts all successful Experience, so that it may justly be concluded, that Pil. de Aloe lota, de Eupatorio Maslichinae, de Tribus, and indeed all the compounded Pills of most Dispensatories, are most irrational and empirical, adapted more for the use of Mountebancks, than dogmatic Physicians.  
11. Of all others, Pil. Tartareae Q. may be judged the most ridiculous and senseless, for reasons mentioned before in several Chapters. More than three or four sorts of compounded purgative Pills in an Apothecary's Shop is a number sufficient to answer all, or most usual Intentions of that form, without the needless increase of Pill-pots, or the rendering the place more loathsome in stink, than a Hogsty. Is your Intention to prefer Turbith or Hermodactyls to draw off tartarous Humours from gouty Joints, or with jalap, Gum. Gut. etc. to drain the water from an Hydropic; mix any of them in a just proportion with a good Extractum Rudii or Catholicon, far differently prepared and corrected from the common, and you will avoid being burdened with Elect. Cary●●ost. Pulu. Diaturb. cum Rhab. Pil. de Hermodact. and many others. Next, it is necessary to substitute an excellent compound Pill of milder Purgatives, to answer the ends of Pil. Stom. cum gum. which by the extemporaneous addition of several other purgative Ingredients will supply the superfluous numbers of many other compound Dispensatory Pills. Besides, one composition or two more, which is not material to insert here, will accompish all.  
12. These instances of the various forms of internal composite Medicines are premised as short proofs, whose intersperst Arguments may easily by any moderately rational be applicable to most of those mentioned in vulgar Dispensatories, whereby my labour being epitomised doth excuse me from dissecting every particular, which otherways would necessarily swell into the bulk of a large Folio. As for the external Medicines, though their Compositions do equally abound with Absurdities, and most senseless Incongruities, their use importing less danger, I will wave giving myself any further trouble.  
13. In conclusion, since it so plainly appears, that most Dispensatory Medicines are not other than Expectation Remedies; Nothing seems more incumbent upon combined Physicians, than framing a succinct neat Pharmacopoea, consisting of necessary, select, and experienced· cines, which cannot be hoped for in this Century from the preposterous and crude Education of most of 'em, scarce one in twenty being acquainted with the tenth part of the faces and virtues of the Simples, and much less of the Composites. Touching Chemical Medicines, most of their Preparations may rather be termed destructions of those materials, they are conversant about, and the blazoning of their virtues are so grandiloquious, and notoriously false, that the correction and improvement of that part of Pharmacy requires a man of greater reason and skill, than I ever yet knew a Conclave Physician.   

CHAP. XXII.  
That the laying too much stress upon the Methodus Medendi, is a great cause of the hindrance of the improvement of Physic, is attested by very remarkable Instances.  
OF all those pernicious Doctrines, never any proved more ruinous to the Art of Physic, than that which beyond others was so emphatically introduced by Capivac. viz. Read my Method and you know all my Secrets, importing the Method of Physic the only chief and necessary part, and ultimate end of the Art This false position being imbibed and sucked in by Infant Physicians, is the great cause of their neglect of Pharmacy, which in my Opinion is the most necessary of all, supposing it to comprehend not only the just and due Preparations of Medicines, but also their certain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, and throughly experienced Effects and Virtues. Touching the Therapeutic or Method of Physic, it is no more than a way, manner, or order of applying of Remedies according to Place, Time, Age, Sex, Temperament, and other circumstanding, all which the only bare knowing and understanding the nature of the Remedy, which itself with a little ocular experience of themselves or others, doth naturally show and point at, and therefore doth so evidently render the knowledge thereof the most necessary and important of all others, notwithstanding the stupid neglect of it hitherto. This Discourse doth not exclude the necessary study and knowledge of all the other parts of Physic ●urther, than to arrive to a competency, and not to trifle away the best part of their time in needless Curiosities, and too fine spun Speculations of Anatomy. A Bricklayer or Stone-cutter, beyond the knowledge of the brickleness and fissility of a Stone, which rather a little Experience will inform him in, than a long Theory, should he dwell eight or ten years upon the study of the Philosophy of Stones, their material, external, and internal efficient and adjuvant causes, their Species and differences, in contempt and neglect of his Trowel and Mortar, the use whereof experience doth soon inform him in, without being much instructed in the Method of daubing and smearing, you would certainly conclude him a mad man, and make a Prediction, that it was almost impossible, he should ever make a good Workman, as little as he, that has consumed the gross of his time in Anatomy, or any other part of Physic, in neglect of Pharmacy, should ever come to be a good Physician; an instance whereof I will give you in one, that was the greatest Anatomist of his time, and no extraordinary Physician, namely Dr. William Harvey, whose erroneous Judgement was very remarkable in the prescription of a Purge for Esq Rainton of Enfield, where the Apothecary refraining to prepare more than half the proportion, notwithstanding gave him fourscore stools, which otherwise according to the Doctor's measures, must unavoidably have scowered him from the close Stool into the other World. The Consult made a great noise, when Dr. Wright, Prudgean, Bates, and others, together with the famed Dr. Harvey were Principals; and one Mr. Farewell, Barrister of the Temple, was Patiented and Complainent of a painful Disease in his Belly, that deprived him of the use of his Limbs, Strength, Appetite, and Digestion, etc. the forementioned Dr. Harvey engrossed to himself the speaking part, by reason of his extraordinary claim to Anatomy, and which here, if any where, seemed to be of use; after a long contrectation of all the abdomen, did very magisterially and positively assert all his Symptoms to arise from an Aneurism of an Artery, and therefore incurable, as being too remote to come at, wherein all, except Dr. Bates, very readily concurred, though it was a most absurd offer in Opinion, as ever I yet heard. The Patient being unwilling to give up his cause so; removed his Corpus cum causa to Chelsie, where Sir Theodore Majerne lay Bedridden at his Countryhouse, who upon no long examen of the matter told him, he was the second, or third Patient he had met with diseased in the same kind, and very boldly expressed, he would cure him, but with this inconvenience, that he could throw the cause of the Disease either into his Arms or Legs, according to the choice he would make of those Limbs, which he could best spare, or which of 'em might be more or less useful to him, without consulting the Will and Pleasure of God Almighty, an Arrogancy unheard of, and favouring more of the Atheist (as too many of 'em are) than a pious Physician, as then especially he ought to have been, being not many stages from his Journeys end. Mr. Farewell in respect of his Profession, where writing is so necessary, replied, that his business being sedentary, he could best yield to the captivity of his Legs, though even they upon the Doctor's assurance should be released by a Month or six Weeks diligence at the Bath. You are to apprehend, that the cause of this great Disease was an obstinate obstruction of the Glanduls of the Mesentery immensely swelled up, and hardened by coagulation of tartarous and slimy Humours, making a strong pressure upon the Arteria magna, which by a potent renixe did duplicate its force of Pulsation, that imposed on Dr. Harvey the false notion of an Aneuris, which ought rather to have been termed a Vibration. The conglobated tumour by compression causing ● coarctation upon the Nerves, milky, and other Vessels, occasioned the great Weakness of his Limbs, an Atrophy, etc. and by hussing up the Bowels against the Diaphragm, rendered his respiration extraordinary difficult. The grand empirical Medicine (from which his Father Turquetus, usually by the French nicknamed the Turc, had got great Reputation by selling it publicly on the Stage, whom Sir Theodore in his younger years had attended in that Employ, if common Vogue may be credited) being in a proportionable Dose mixed with some gentle Purgatives, had the success to dissolve those gross glutinous Humours, and through their weight and tendency downward, throw them down into his Legs, as being parts much weakened, and consequently more readily suscipient. Nature by being disburdened of that load, that had hitherto obstructed the free course of his nutritive and animal Juices, was vigorous enough to restore the Bowels to their former Functions, as afterwards the Bath proved no less effectual in retrieving the use of his Legs. The following case of a Tailor in Fleetstreet, whose Name has escaped my Memory, though I can with little difficulty recover the knowledge of it, was not ordinary. His complaint to the Doctor was a Sciatica, that rendered him lame and cripple, besides frequent returns of very sharp pains. The Dr. would not engage in the cure of so great and hazardous a Disease, without a considerate and distinct answer to three Points: 1. Whether he could sequester himself from his Trade for three Months. 2. Whether he valued the expense of fifty pounds beyond the recovery of his health. 3. Whether he could contemperate his passion, in enduring the Part to be laid open to the bone, by cutting or burning. The Patient very readily consented to the two former conditions, Time and Money; but to the third being entirely averse, took his leave with the ceremony due to so famed a Physician, and applied himself to another of a much lower form, who with little preamble advised him to the Bath, where he received a perfect cure in six weeks. No doubt but Dr. Harvey in Anatomy, and happiness of theoretic discoveries might justly pretend the precedency of all his Contemporaries; and others before and since have also arrived to a great proficiency in Cat and Dog●cutting, also Calf-head and Sheeps-pluck dissecting; yet few of 'em when concerned in Practice, were gifted with sagacity to know Diseases when offered to their view, much less capable to curing them; in which curative particular the Thinking Physician has the advantage, though the Prating Physician by his pretended Anatomy ingrosses the opinion of Mankind.   

CHAP. XXIII.  
Holding forth the Practical Part and Methodus Medendi of the Art of Expectation.  
1. THE tricks of Malpighi's Dioptrical Anatomy are as subject to a deceptio visus, as the Forests, Seas, and Rivers discerned in the Moon by the glass-eye of an optic tube. However, the Methodus Medendi can as little boast of the least alteration to the better, assistence, or use it has mutuated from the light of those, Circulation, watery and milky chanals, and the rest of the novel appearances, as a Waterman of his easier passage to Gravesend, by spying new Cuts and Creeks, that disembogue into: the Thames. The Remedies and the materia medica are much the same they were one hundred or two years' last passed, though the success issuing from their application is rather less now, than in preceding Centuries, which cannot be imputed to any thing, besides the blind ●aith we give to their idle compound medicines, and the neglect of examining the virtues of every Simple in particular.  
2. So true it is, that Observation drawn from experience of the effects of single Remedies upon particular Diseases, allowing for variation, as to dose, time, strength, and other circumstances of the Patient and Distemper, is the sole Inventor and Improver of the Art of Physic, as that Non-Observation is the sole cause, that modern Physicians in happy Cures are scarce comparable with the Ancients; so that, the Art is so far from advancing, that it is wholly upon the retrograde, and for want of due Education in young Students, it will in time return again to Machao● and Podalyrius.  
Per varios usus artem experientia fecit, Exemplo monstante viam.  
3. The Sun at Noonday is not more clear, than the evidence of that assertion, and others premised in former Paragraphs, yet their reception among the vulgar, that is so much debauched by the false Impressions of Physicians, can as little be hoped for, as the Gospel among Mahometans, that are so deeply prejudiced by impious Doctrines infused into them by their Priests in their Infancy, and cherished until their Deaths.  
4. The Tools, and the materia medica used by the Art of curing Diseases by Expectation, are sufficiently discoursed on; the practic part consists in the Methodus of applying those insignificant Remedies. As the Doctrine of other Arts depends on certain Theorems, and Postulata, so doth this famous one. 1. Most curable Diseases are cured by Nature and Time. 2. Many Diseases become incurable and consequently mortal, where Nature is too weak, and time too short. 3. Nature being strong, and the Disease weak, or not very violent, time is the grand Remedy, and the principal Indicatum. It follows then, that the chief scope and intention of the Expectation Physician is the gaining of Time, and to elude the Patient from time to time, until Nature hath conquered the Disease. The way he deludes the Patient in time is, 1. Confidently he assures him from this time to that of relief and abatement of his Distemper; in order thereunto presents him with a Narrative of several of his Patients diseased in the same manner, how at this hour and that, this day and that day they received most sensible abatements; but be sure he hath a good Memory, for fear the Patient entraps him, for sick-men are wonderfully ruminating, and oportet Mendacem esse Memorem. This part being acted with a good mien, as a sour face, a black jerking, broad Beaver, a huge weighty Cane (that adds much) and a pretended Conscience will extremely (as Rhetoricians say) incline the hearing, and gain the assent of his sick Auditor, insomuch that his Spirits will be roused thereby, that he may plainly see them walk and jump all over his Phys▪ in a blithe Countenance; this fourbery repeated once or twice a day (if the Patiented feeths well, not else) will make him patiently expect from one day to another, from one week to another, and from one Month to another (not from one year to another, unless he be mad) until at last Nature hath vanquished the Disease, the Patient is cured by Expectation, and the Physician steals the Title of triumphant from Nature, with a Purse of Guinea's.  
5. If the Patient prove resty to all good admonitions for gaining of time, the Expectation Physician changing his Dialect, threatens to desert him, as Cottier did the King of France, with a Prognostic, if any other (honester) Physician takes him in hand, he infallibly dies; moreover gives him very negligent visits, makes the Patient send twice or thrice, before he comes once, and then tarries so little, that he pretends, this Duke, that Earl, a third and a fourth Noble man are in a most wonderful hot pursuit for his advice, who all are sick of his Distemper. This argument is so prevailing, that it will tie the Patient to his Bed, or his Chamber, as long as the Doctor pleases, and makes him a slave to any time he thinks fit.  
6. Besides this Chamber Conversation and Tongue Practice, there must be some Remedies prescribed, that do no good, the best of which are such as do no hurt, and consequently must be very safe. And since all Remedies tend to this scope, that they may assist the Patient in passing over of his time, they ought to be prescribed to various set hours, which in waiting for he always passeth so much time; and therefore he ought to have a different Medicine prescribed for him to take every hour, or at least every two hours; for as I said, the expecting such and such hours is a great means to pass away time. Those Expectation medicines should be of different taste and scent, but chief pleasant, so however that they may not be hurtful; these are to entertain the Patient's palate, and to a sick man are what the smoke of Tobacco is to one that's well. External medicines are also of great use here, in regard they will take up the Patient so much time in applying, renewing, and shifting. As for example, to a great pain in the head, or any other part, a friendly po●ltis of three or four insignificant herbs, a little Bran, etc. but aught to be prepared in the Patient's Chamber, that he may pass away so much time in seeing them sent ●or, brought to him, and boiled in his presence, and then applied, and knowing likewise what the Ingredients are, he will give the more credit to such things, which his Grannum used to tell him, were very good and sovereign. In the Gout likewise, if the Expectation-Physician presents his Patient gratis with this following nostrum, it will not only be well taken, but much more veneration will be given to it, than if it came from the Apothecary's shop, and to the Physician will redound a very lasting diffusive glory and reputation; viz. ten links of thread, half yard long, dipped in Wax of ten different colours; each is to be tied by the Patient, if possible, or by his Nurse, to each distinct Toe of the Feet, and to be untied every hour or two, and changed to other toes, namely, the red waxed thread where the green was, the blue where the yellow, etc. By this means a great deal of time will be passed, and if the Patient continues tying and untying, until a good long fit is expired; it will have also another good effect of rendering his back very flexible, and being tired at Night prove a means to make him sleep without the charge of a dose of Opium.  
7. Since it cannot well be expected, that I shall exemplify the Methodus medendi together with the Remedies of this rich and noble Art in all Diseases, I will only instance it in some few, that are most universal. A continual Fever after once or twice bleeding, which beyond all dispute is of use, and truly preparative to a Cure, requires a good thin water Gruel, or a Barley water with its appurtenances for an ordinary drink. Next two or three sorts of Cordials to be taken at different hours, for reasons before mentioned. Also some few testaceous Powders for other times of Physic Devotion. If the Belly hath forgot its Office, that may be minded of its duty by a Milk and Sugar clyster every other day. The Spirits of Hartshorn well rectified, and the blistering Plaster may be put in use in the declination of the Distemper, for than they will prove the least hurtful. The Cordials usually consist of two or three simple Waters, as of Carduus ben. Scabious, etc. with a fourth part, or rather sixth part of Epidemic water, and the Julep to be sweetened with Syrup of Gillyflowers. Such sort of simple waters mixed with a fourth or sixth part of small Cinamon-water, Pearl grinded into an impalpable Powder, which Crabs Eyes will equal in all its pretended Excellencies, and sweetened with fine white ●ugar; all this makes up the Pearl Cordial. For your diet avoid flesh meat, and content yourself with Grewel, Panada, etc. Nothing is more certain than that this whole course is perfectly Expectation, there being nothing in it that makes the least step towards a real true cure, so that all those, that are recovered by such a Method and Remedies, own the restitution of their health to strength of Nature and Time. Desume your curative indications from any pretended Theory of Fevers; as suppose they are caused by a fermention of the Blood, the precited▪ Remedies participate of nothing, that can or doth diminish and extinguish the fermentation, or (if you please) gently help it on so, as it may terminate, the sooner. Suppose a Fever is caused by a putrefactive Ebullition, those preternatural Particles in the Blood, that move it into that violent passion, are opposed by nothing▪ that 〈◊〉 contained in those Medicines and most certainly did not Physicians assent to that Opinion, they would not so universally have re●ected them, and make the Jesuits bark the sole Anchor of their 〈◊〉 in that case. What I have more to object, you may read in another Treatise.  
8. Can any one without scorn behold such drones of Physicians, (I speak generally, and therefore desire no false Innuendo may be made) that after the space of so many hundred years' Experience and Practice of their Predecessors, not one single Medicine hath been ●et detected by them, that hath the least force directly and per se to oppose, resist, or expel a continual Fever, which by their erroneous Applications is too oft provected to malignity? Should any by a more sedulous Observation pretend, or make the least step towards the discovery of such Remedies, their hatred and envy would swell against him, as a Legion of Devils against Virtue; whole Societies would dart their Malice at him, and torture him with all the Calumnies imaginable, without sticking at any thing, that should destroy and rain him root and branch, (or which I could give you a very memorable Example, were it convenient) for he that professes a reformation of the Art of Physic, in exposing its Impostures, and advancing such Methods and Remedies, that are beyond those of the Art of Expectation, must resolve to run the hazard of the Martyrdom of his Reputation, Life, and Estate, especially when it's considered, that the greatest and best part of Mankind is prepossessed with a Judgement, that's imus●d into them by Expectation Physicians, to some or other of whom almost every man is linck●d by Acquaintance, Kindred, Knowledge, or Drunkenness.  
9 Nothing hath ever proved more fatal than this universal Notion, that in the small Pox you must always be driving out, in giving strong Diaphoreticks or sweeting Medicines, which in kindling the Fever-●igher, that's usually a concomitant, or rather preceding, doth convert it into malignant, and continuing as such, its impossible the virulent Eruptions should ever appear, considering the small Pox is a Crisis, or critical propulsion of virulent Pustles, (very commonly) of a Febris continua imputris, or Diaria plurium dierum, ordinarily so termed by Physicians, and ofttimes of a Febris continua putrida. A Crisis is never to be expected but after digestion and separation, and then ensues Expulsion; so that if you endeavour to expel by sweeting, before Nature is ready by finishing the digestion and separation, you do most certainly anger the Spirits, and put them into an high fury, and as long as you continue thus, you may sooner expect Death, than the breaking forth of the small Pox. In this particular it is, that Nurses, and the careful old Women by their common Expectation Remedies, as Hartshorn or plain Posset-drink, or a small Fig-decoction in Water or small Beer, do oft excel the best of Physicians in their erroneous Methods of driving out.  
10. Considering further, that in many Children and others, there is proceeding only a small simmering of the Blood, which may properly enough be termed a Fermentation, an Ebullition being a more violent and impetuous motion, which if abated or entirely quieted by cooling aqueous, and acid Juleps, the virulency is suppressed in the Eruption, or repelled upon the Brain and Nerves, whence succeed mortal Convulsions; or upon the Vitals, viz. the Heart and Lungs, occasioning an immediate Suffocation, or terminative Syncope. On the other hand, where there is an high Fever or putrefactive Ebullition, until that be reduced to a gentle Fermentation (for in the most lax sense an Ebullition and Fermentation differ only secundum magis & minus, and in the end) the small Pox or Meazels will never break forth, though using the strongest expulsives, which most certainly failing in their intended effect, never fail in the raising the Fever to the highest acuteness and malignity; and therefore I have ever observed, that most of those that are grown up, who die under the Hands of Physicians, own their death to the Fever, and kill Medicines, and not to the deficiency of expulsion, which cannot be expected, as long as the putrid Fever is not reduced to a Fermentation, as they call it. When the Eruption appears, if too slow, it is to be quickened; if too violent, it will be moderated by such proper Medicines, as resist that Malignity. Moreover, this remark hath been constant, that the great proflux of virulent matter to the skin in a fluxed Pox, proceeds from not resisting the putrid Fever in a foul Body (and in others also) by peculiar Medicines unknown to most of them, before it came to too great an height. If any part of their external matter of steams return into the internal parts in a fluxed Pox, where the external Pores are very oft stopped, it doth not seldom prove mortal, the principal parts being too much weakened to repel it back to the circumference. The truth of these Observations may seem probable from my own good Fortune, who never to my remembrance was concerned with Man, Woman, or Child, that died under my Hands of the small Pox or Meazels in thirty years, except one, a Boy aged seven or eight years, to whom I was sent one day before he died, to consult with one Mr. Barmick, a Physic Doctor, and the Families then ordinary Physician. The Child's Skin being speckled with black Spots like Pestilential Exanthemata or Tokens, the Pox appearing of an Olive colour, and attended with a bloody Urine, it was told the Parents, it was too late; we agreed upon two or three Expectation Remedies, and so ended our grave Consult.  
11. Coughs, as I mentioned before, are through Expectation cured by Syrups, and other sugared composts, which sometimes prove the worst of Expectation Remedies, in regard they clog and oppress the Stomach, though by a present smoothing of the Gullet, and giving ease, they readily persuade the coughing Patient he receives benefit, and therefore is very willing to stay from one time to another, until by the help of abstinence Nature hath thrown up the abounding slime.  
12. For the better understanding of this matter, know there are more Coughs of the Stomach, than of the Lungs; and that most Coughs in the beginning are Stomach-Coughs, though afterwards by long continuance some turn into Lung-Coughs, and then they threaten danger. The Diaphragm with the help of the Musculs of the Breast and Belly, or abdomen, do as readily discharge or displode and throw-up humours out of the Gullet, and by succession out of the Stomach, as out of the Windpipe or Lungs. These humours are lodged in the glanduls of the Gullet, discoursed of at large in my Treatise of the Scurvy, which being swelled up, and irritated by Acrimony, contracted from the admixture of the vitiated dissolvent or ferment of the Stomach, and long Stagnation, by consent of parts and vellication of the Nerves of the sixth pair, incite and spur the diaphragm to an Explosion. The Argumentum à juvantibus & laedentibus plainly proves the assertion. 1. Smoothing Medicines have a present influence upon those Coughs, which must necessarily be from their immediate acting upon the Gullet, for their property and virtue without all contradiction must be changed into a different Operation, before they can be supposed to arrive to the Lungs. 2. It's vulgarly known, that Vomitives, or Purgatives have cured thousands of these sort of Coughs, by emptying the Stomach, and drawing from the Glanduls of the Gullet. 3. Sharp four drinks, Salts, and Spices do oft immediately force violent Coughs. 4. The sense of the Patient doth testify a weight and oppression at the Stomach, loathing of Victuals, and impair of digestion. 5. Fasting by diminishing those humours in the Stomach is another affirmative proof. 6. Long and deep coughing oft moving to nauseousness and Vomits, plainly demonstrates the Stomach chief affected in this sort of Cough. 7. The slime that's thrown up being oft yellow, green, and of other variegated colours, receives that tincture in many cases from the different qualities and nature of the dissolvent or ferment of the Stomach, varying according to the nature of the food ingested a day or two before. 8. The same slime hath sometimes been observed to be mixed with an indigested chyle. 9 Syrup of Violets hath oft been returned by Cough and Expectoration with Phleme tinctured blue, a Proof, it came from the Stomach or Gullet. Besides these, I must omit many other Arguments too prolix to be here inserted.  
13. Those Coughs that have followed some ten, twenty, or thirty years, and others I have known to continue forty years, are undoubtedly Stomach Coughs; and assuming rather the office of an Issue or drain, are scarce to be termed Diseases, but necessary Evacuations, and are to be treated very cautiously; for being violently turned downward by repeated strong Purgatives, nature having lost its accustomed roads, must in some interval of time extremely suffer by it. Very frequently a long Cough doth turn either to a Consumption with an Hectic Fever, or to a putrid continual Fever. In Consumptions attended with an Hectic Fever, the slime that's expectorated is intermixed for the most part with purulent Particles.  
My design not being a Treatise of Coughs, further than to give you an instance of its expectative mode of curing, which in this and the preceding Diseases is a sufficient pattern for many others, I proceed to the next.   

CHAP. XXIV.  
Of the Use and Abuse of a College of Physicians.  
THE Term of College of Physicians making such an obstreperous noise, it may be of use to inform the Reader with the right sense of the matter.  
A College of Physicians is a voluntary friendly Club, Society, or Association of Doctors of Physic, mutually consented, and agreed unto, under certain just and equal Conditions, Rules, Laws, Covenants and Promises corroborated, made binding and valid by the Allowance, Concession, or Approbation of the Magistrate, to the end a mutual friendly Correspondence, Behaviour, and Respect he had to each other, a just Regulation be made in the Practice of Physic, the Art improved by their joint Endeavours and amicable Conserences, and most chiefly that all may be intended and designed for the public good in general, and of every one under their Care in particular, also for the Honour of the Art Whatever is not exactly square and suitable with every individual branch of this description, infers usual and set meetings of Physicians, rather a Pseudo-Collegium, Combination, Physick-Riot, or bundle of Physicians unjustly tied together for the attaining of their particular ends, to the prejudice of the Public; so that, a threat or force put upon Physicians by unlawful arrests, imprisonment, a magisterial arrogant Citation by Writ and Bedel, Calumnies, and Scandals, to compel or drive them into a College of Phys. is neither voluntary nor friendly, nor can ever conspire into a Society, which implies a real and virtuous Friendship between the Members or Colleagues. On the contrary, Persons so driven in must very probably retain a resentment, which shall ever after occasion jarrings, contests, abuses, and affronts. Wherefore, in all Protestant Colleges of Physicians abroad, it is a Custom flowing from their Humanity and good Manners, 
— didicisse fideliter Artes,  
Emollit Mores, nec sinit esse feros.  upon the knowledge of the arrival of any Doctor of Physic to their City, and his intent of settling there, to depute two Colleague Physicians out of their body, to congratulate him at his House or Lodgings, and give him an Invitation in obliging Language, that he will please to give them the honour of his Company at their College meeting, where showing unto him their Statutes, they very civility request him to be a Member of their Society by subscribing to their Laws. After their Physic Affairs an Conferences are finished, they are entertained with a Glass of Wine, interposed with familiar Discourses one with the other. This indeed looks like a Society, or friendly Conversation; but to hurry a Stranger, thought a most learned Doctor of Physic, like a Rascal or Criminal by their Beadle to their College Tribunal, and there read to him this Sentence; Thou shalt go to the place from whence thou camest, and thence attend all our Members at each their individual dwelling place, (which sometimes is a Garret) your Flat in your Right-hand, your Lefthand on your Breast, your Knees bending, and your Head hanging down, with an humble Petition, that they will please to condescend to your admittance into their College; and having obtained all their Suffrages, thoushalt return hither, and yet at the lower end of that Table with thy Hat on thy Knees, thy Hands on thy Hat, thy Eyes modestly looking on thy said Hat, and in that Posture make answer to all such Questions as shall be proposed unto you. After thou hast like a good School Boy merited our Favour, we do require of thee, to pay unto our Treasurer thirty, forty, fifty, threescore, fourscore, or a hundred pounds. This is the Custom of most Popish Colleges in France, Italy, and elsewhere, without an Innuendo. At Paris the Mule-Doctors demand either three or six thousand Livres; at Angers six hundred Livres; and in another place one hundred pounds. Whether this arbitrary Extortion supported by a pretended Law, be not worse than a Decimation, Fine, or Tax set upon the head of a Prisoner by the Banditi of Calabria, I leave to your Judgement. Whether a legal Doctor of Physic of twenty, thirty, or forty years' Practice, of known Learning and Experience, shall be basely summoned by a Pseu●lo-Collegium, or a false pretended illegal forlitten College, as many in France, Italy, etc. (whereof some are Papists, Atheist, Impostors, Barbers, and Apothecaries, graduated by the French King's Mandate, or gratuitously doctorated by crowding in among the Attendants of Princes upon their visiting an University; others may be grofly ignorant, originally bluecoat Boys, and unduly educated, in committing of Murders exceeding Italian Bravoes) and by them without being upon their Oath (for dare fidem is no more, but to promise) be examined and demanded the most puerile idle insignificant questions, which though answered with the greatest exactness imaginable, he shall maliciously be returned by them as ignoramus, on purpose to make a monopoly of Physic; by excluding all Physicians legally promoted to degrees, by that sort of barbarous usage, and binding of them to Statutes, that no man in conscience, honesty, justice, or honour can submit unto; I ask whether all this be not more agreeable with the Spirit of Devils, than of Men? Should a pious learned and legal Doctor of Divinity upon his application to his Bishop, before he will admit him to a Living, be required by him to be examined by his Chaplain, who shall put him to the reading of his Greek Alphabet, do you not think, this would be an affront to Universities, and a very unchristian way of dealing? The case is much the same.  
The true description of a College asserts the regulation of practice to be one of the true ends; that is to agree to such rules or orders, as may direct and guide them in Consultations; as that the elder Physician shall give his Opinion first, on last; that the suffrages or Opinions shall be collected and determined by the Physician in ordinary of the Patient. That no Physician shall insinuate into the Patient's favour to put out the Physician in ordinary, and such like orders: But these are not to relate to any Physician, that is not of their College, who in all Protestant Countries have an equal privilege of Practice, which is derived from the Universities. For a College of Physicians to pretend to examine, and give Licenses to practice, is a down right affront and injury to the Universities. It is most natural, that they that teach a Profession ought to be Judges to know, when the Scholar is sufficiently taught to exercise that Profession. Shall an University be at the trouble and charge to maintain Professors to instruct and teach Scholars, and not have the honour and recompense to endow them with the privilege to exercise what they taught them. It is a cheat in all Universities to grant a power and privilege of practising Physic, if they cannot maintain it; this is nonsense all over. If a College of Physicians will presume to give Licenses, they ought to entertain Professors to read and teach Physic, and confer degrees; and then they must come under the notion of an University. Neither can or ought any Popish College of Physicians (abroad) be so impudently arrogant, as to assume a power to judge of Male-practice, and thereupon arbitrarily to set a mulct, or imprison; for that would infer them to be judge and party, which is most absurd. Besides it implies, they take a Regal Power upon them; for a Prince is the supreme Judge, there being none above him; and so a College pretends to be the supreme Judge of Mase-practice, there being none above them to judge of their Male-practice, as oft as they shall commit it, unless you will presume a College cannot err, no more than a Prince▪ Moreover to judge, determine, fine, and imprison, is to undertake upon the power of the Civil Magistrate, to abridge their Authority, and to affront their respect and dignity, which is the greatest piece of Impudence, that can be alleged. No more than the Guild of Goldsmiths can punish and imprison any of their own Members, or Foreigners, for counterfeiting or abasing the Standart of Gold or Silver in a piece of Plate, can a College punish any Physician for Male-practice, or Murder, neither can they arbitrarily extort sums of Money from Apothecaries or Mountebancks, for vending of good or bad Medicines. These are matters the Civil Magistrate takes cognisance of, and the Corpus juris civilis is provided with Laws under several heads for punishing Physicians, Apothecaries, Surgeons, Mountebancks, and all others for Male and illegal Practice; and every offence or crime being only punishable by one sole proper Court, shall a man be punished by a College of Physicians, and afterward be punishable by the common Laws of a Country? this certainly is an absurdity; for no man can or aught to be twice punished for the same offence. In a College of Physicians all aught to be Doctors of Physic, that is, of an equal rank and dignity, without pretending to any other precedency, than what for order's sake Seniority allows; or how can they else be termed a Society or a meeting for sociable Conversation, which naturally includes a parity and equality of Members? In conclusion, to verify this whole Discourse, give me leave to present to your view, as an Example, and Pattern, a Translation of the printed Statutes (annexed to the Pharmacopoea Hagiensi●) of one of justest, and most learned Colleges of Physicians of Europe, viz. that of the Hague, whereof myself for thirty years past have been, and am the meanest of their Members.  

The Preamble.  
The Physicians of the Hague have attended the Magistrates, that they might diligently according to the utmost of their Power promote the public good, having established among themselves a College, and being engaged in a brotherly and inviolable hearty Society, have most willingly bound themselves to this Order, Rank, and Laws, hereafter to be most punctually observed.  
1. LET the honour of the Art and public welfare be the Supreme Law. 2. Let the whole care of the College be remaining in a Deacon, two Assistants, and a Secretary. 3. Let the Right and Authority be in the Deacon either of calling together these Rulers, or the whole College; of propounding matters to be deliberated; of collecting the Suffrages of things propounded; of concluding the Sentence (except the matter be weighty) and of deciding equal Votes to their Satisfaction. 4. Upon a Citation at a certain hour they are required to be pres●●t at their Secretary's House. Those that come late, that is after an half hour, are to, forfeit six pence, and twelve pence 〈◊〉 they are absent. 5. Let every one give ●is judgement when it's required by the Dea●on, and not before; Let none interrupt the Discourse of any, without 〈◊〉 leave from the Deacon; The Consultation being●ended, it is free to every one to propound what may be advantageous to the College. 6. The Secretary ought to have in keeping the public 〈◊〉 wherein the Decrees are 〈◊〉, the ●●nck or public Stock, and what is belonging to the College; And when he quits his Office he is to 〈…〉 A●ount of what he hath received and 〈◊〉 to the preceding and succeeding 〈◊〉. 7. Those that purpose to 〈◊〉 at the Hague are friendly to be 〈◊〉; such as are willing having 〈◊〉 to the Rulers their Diple●●, or Letters Patent 〈◊〉 their 〈◊〉 promotion's to the 〈…〉, and promised by Subscription to observe their Lairs made, or that hereafter may be made with the Approbation of the Civil Magistrate, shall be admitted, th●se that refuse, are to be excluded. 8. Whoever after two Months from the first day of January of the year 1658. will subscribe to this College, shall immediately pay four pounds ten shillings to the Treasurer; and afterward every first day of January nine shillings and six pence. 9 The Rulers shall be chosen every year; In the room of the Deacon shall succeed the first Assistant, in his room the second; in his the Secretary, in his the Signior Colleague; and if it shall happen that there shall not be any that shall have practised twelve years, beginning again the order from the Senior, it shall descend to the juniors. 10. Each is obliged to endeavour to preserve an unanimous Concord, and to shun all Envy, detraction, Calumnies and Contentions. 11. He that is called in to a sick Man that hitherto had used the advice of another, let him forbear giving his Advice (unless necessity urge) before the first Physician be come; and also afterwards if the former Physician was dismissed without his Reward. 12. Several being called in Consultation, let the Power or Authority of examining, of expounding the Opinions, and applying the Remedies be in the first called Physician. 13. Let all Consultations be made in the absence of the Patient and his Friends, in an open and general declaration of all Remedies that have been used, and particular declaration of those that are to be used. 14. An Affront or Injury offered to a Colleague by reason of Practice, or through occasion of this Society, let every man believe it is offered to himself, and hold himself obliged to its defence. 15. Those Laws made (unless the unanimous Consent shall otherwise persuade) shall be held immutable, those that are hereafter to be made shall be observed; those Persons that are refractory shall be expelled.   

The Approbation and Confirmation of these Laws by the Civil Magistrate.  
WE the Bailiff, Burgemasters, and Eschevins of the City of the Hague in Holland, having well perspected, and duly examined the above written Statutes, have approved and confirmed them, as by these Presents we do approve and confirm them, reserving unto ourselves their Interpretation, Augmentation, and Derogation; Wherefore we have caused these to be strengthened by our common Seal, and signed by our Secretary, on the 8th day of the Month of February of the Year 16●0 Fifty Eight.  
Locus Sigilli. Locus Nominis Secretarii.   
I am to give you a farther account, that all those Conversations at their College meeting are managed in the Latin Tongue, and so are all Consultations, which makes me presume, that many Physicians that are Colleagues in some other place, would not pass muster with us, not only for being imperfect Scholars, but for being unduly educated, and probably but half Physicians, and little Physicksters. Moreover as to the small sum of Money, that is required for the defraying of necessary charges only, any Doctor of Physic whose straightness of fortune will not bear so small an Expense, is not only admitted Gratis, but they are also very inclinable to recommend him to business. Doctor Whitaker, who was Physician to his Majesty's Family King Charles the Second in his Exile, and one Doctor Magdowel a Scots-man, were both very sensible of their Civilities in that kind.  
As to the Educating a young Student to the Art of Physic, which I have cursorily hinted at before, there is no University in the World comparable to that of Leyden in Holland, which doth so far excel Milan, Bolongne, Montpelier, or Paris, that they ought not to be named in one Paragraph, though I judge it necessary for a Physician to visit them, and some others, but for different purposes, which I have exactly described in a Treatise without my Name to it, called the Accomplished Physician and Honest Apothecary, Fol. 17. Printed for W. Thackery in Duck-lane. That Tract, The Noble Man's Case, The Conclave of Physicians, and this do all variously express the Mistakes, Errors, Frauds, and unworthy Practices of Physicians, whereof every day gives new Matter, and will do to the Worlds End.  
The Education there described I have to a tittle observed myself, and have also a Son beyond Sea passing the same Track, which I dare presume not ●ix in this whole Kingdom have done.  
FINIS.   

Advertisement of two Books, lately Published by Dr. Gideon Harvey, and sold by James Partridge.  
1. THE Conclave of Physicians in two Parts, Detecting their Intrigues, Frauds, and Plots against their Patients, and their destroying the Faculty of Physic; also a Peculiar Discourse of the Jesuits Bark, the History thereof with its true Use and Abuse; moreover an Account of some Eminent Cases, and new Principles in Physic of greater Use than any yet known, in 12ᵒ.  
2. Casus Medico Chirurgius; or, a most Memorable Case of a noble Man, deceased, wherein is showed his Lordship's wound, the various Diseases survening; how his Physicians and Surgeons treated him, how treated by the Author after my Lord was given over by all ●is Physicians, with all their opinions and remedies. Moreover the Art 〈…〉 dangerous of Wounds by the 〈…〉 Description 〈…〉