Page:The Thruston speech on the progress of medicine 1880.djvu/8

4 some two or three years after the birth of Caius. Thus we find an Act evidently framed as protective, against the dangers which rightly might be apprehended, from the ignorant practices of those aspirants to medical fame, whose knowledge could scarcely be said to equal their assurance. In the preamble of this Act we may read as follows:—

"Foreasmuch as the science and cunning of physic and surgery, to the perfect knowledge whereof be requisite both great learning and ripe experience, is daily within this realm exercised by a great multitude of ignorant persons; of whom the greater part have no manner of insight in the same, or in any other kind of learning; some also can know no letters on a book, so far forth that common artificers as smiths, weavers, and women boldly take upon themselves great cures and things of great difficulty, in the which they partly use sorcery and witchcraft, and partly apply such medicine unto the disease as be very noxious, and nothing meet thereof, to the