Page:A Treatise upon the Small-Pox.pdf/11

Rh '' to favour and take part with their antecedent Maxims, and settle a Method of Cure by the Influence of a byassed Judgment, and pre-notions of Things. It will be in vain to say, that these Persons, who have not seen much Business, have formed their unpractised Scheme upon the Experience and Observations which they have found in the Writings of many eminent Physicians; for those Authors themselves, at least the generality of them, were such as before they had entred on the Practice of Physick, had established their Maxims and Doctrines in the Schools and Colleges, and not entring upon Business with an unprejudiced and impartial Mind, they formed their Practice and governed their Observations to make them agree with their first Conceptions; and though according to Reason and the Nature of Things they ought in the first Place to have made their Tryals and Remarks, and upon such Vouchers and Authority to have raised a well-concerted Method of Practice; yet almost all Writers of Physick have communicated to us such Accounts of the Causes of Distempers and their Symptoms and Method of Cure, as were strained and wrested to serve an Hypothesis.'' But