Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/333

 about Fifty Years ago, set up Hippocrates and Galen, as the Parents and Perfecters of Medicinal Knowledge, will find, throughout all their Writings, great Contempt of every Thing that is not plainly deducible from those Texts. On the other Hand, If he dips into the Books of the Chymical Philosophers, he will meet with equal Scorn of those Books and Methods, which they, in Derision, have called Galenical. And yet it is evident, that practising Physicians of both Parties have often wrought very extraordinary Cures by their own Methods. So that there seems to have been equal Injustice of all Hands, in excluding all Methods of Cure not built upon their own Principles. Here therefore, without being positive in a Dispute, about which the Parties concerned are not themselves agreed, I shall only offer these few Things. (1.) That if the Greatness of any one particular Genius were all that was to be looked after, Hippocrates alone seems to have been the Man, whose Assertions in the Practical Part of Physick might be blindly received: For he, without the Help of any great Assistances that we know of, did that which, if it were still to do, would seem sufficient to employ the united Force of more than one Age. He was scrupulously