Page:A Treatise upon the Small-Pox.pdf/19

Rh ''for I do not think they are so. A competent Number of the most celebrated modern Authors should be perused; but their systematical Way and formal Institutions are at least for the greatest part so tedious, heavy and spiritless, that I cannot see how a great Application to them will be of much Service.''

There is yet less Profit to be gained by a laborious Study of the eldest Writers of the Faculty; for such is their Obscurity and Ignorance, and so great and various their Defects, that much Time must be spent in reading over their numerous Volumes, and so little, if any, beneficial Knowledge will be got, to balance this Expence, that Time must lye heavy on any Man’s Hands, that employs it this Way.

''But before I mention the Weakness of the eldest Authors, it is but just to allow them their due Praises, and to make likewise an Apology for their Imperfections. They are to be esteemed and honoured for this, that they were Men of Sense and good natural Endowments, and that they employed their Talents with great Labour and Industry to find out the Art of curing Diseases, and that they made some commendable Advances in it; and that they knew so little of the Matter comparatively, is owing to this, that Physick''