William Cadogan [His essay on gout] / by John Ruhräh.

  • William Cadogan
Date:
1925
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: William Cadogan [His essay on gout] / by John Ruhräh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    only, but the sensible, the judicious, men of parts, and knowledge in other things, in this case equally blind, should pursue, with the same vain hope, after repeated disappointments, the thousand and ten thousand idle arts and tricks of medication and quackery; never once lifting their eyes up to Nature, or consulting her book, open as it lies for the perusal, con¬ viction and benefit of all. Some industrious men, fancying that what¬ ever is valuable must lie deep, have, with the greatest alacrity in sinking, plunged into the immense abyss of ancient, Greek, Roman and Arabic learning, in hopes to find good precepts of health, and sure remedy for disease. But after all their pioneering into endless heaps of rubbish, what have they found at last but this? That in natural philosophy some of the ancients were very ingenious in guessing wrong; for guess was all they did; they never studied Nature at all, they made no experiments, and therefore knew nothing of her; but either blindly followed or combated each others opinions: school against school, and sect against sect, waged equal and endless war. In the art of physic it was impos¬ sible for them to know much; for before our immortal harvey’s discovery of the circulation, ii4b