Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/210

196 of men, as our college of physicians are; and I shall take care to draw out the substance of this argument, and present it, in short heads, to each member at a proper time; and not without some hopes that reason may weigh them.

In the mean time, I hope a worthy gentleman, a member of our house, will stand up on that occasion, and assert the rights of a faculty, which he has entered into, and does an honour to: it must be remembered to his credit, that, being equally skilled in physick and civil law, and, perhaps, in divinity as well as either, he chose to commence in medicine, having chiefly qualified himself for that noble faculty by repeated travels, and enriched his mind with many curious observations, which the world may, in time, expect incredible benefit from.

If any man thinks fit to reply to this argument, and rectify any mistakes in it; I desire him to preserve his temper, and debate the matter with the same coolness that I have done; that no blood may be drawn in the controversy, nor any reason given me to complain of "civilis vulnera dextræ." As conviction chiefly engaged me on the side of physicians; so, in some measure, a sense of gratitude for a faculty, to which I owe the comforts of life, and perhaps life itself; having received from it unspeakable ease in the two inveterate distempers of the spleen and the gout. THE