Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/332

 gestion; yet he sees that his Patient digests his Meat with great Difficulty: He is sure that, as long as that lasts, the sick Man cannot have a good Habit of Body; he finds that the Distemper arises sometimes, though not always, from a visible Cause; and he has tried the Goodness of such and such Medicines, in seemingly parallel Cases. He may be able therefore to give very excellent Advice, though he cannot, perhaps, dive into the Nature of the Distemper so well as another Man; who having greater Anatomical Helps, and being accustomed to reason upon more certain Physiological Principles, has made a strict Enquiry into that very Case: And so by Consequence, though he cannot be said to know so much of the Essence of the Disease as that other Man, yet, perhaps, their Method of Practice, notwithstanding the great Disparity of each others Knowledge, shall be, in the main, the same.

Though all this seems very certain, yet, in the Argument before us, it is not an easie Thing to state the Question so equally, as to satisfie all contending Sides. He that looks into the Writings of the Generality of the Rational Physicians, as they called themselves, by way of Eminence; that is to say, of those who,