Essays medical and experimental / [Thomas Percival].

  • Percival, Thomas, 1740-1804.
Date:
1772
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays medical and experimental / [Thomas Percival]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    64/430 (page 42)
    laboured with infinite pains, to banifh all theory and reafoning from the art of me¬ dicine. Experience, they affirm, is the foie guide to fafe and fuccefsful practice; and fatal is the temerity of fuch who de¬ viate from the beaten path, and trull in any inftance to the direction of their un- derftandings. The proximate caufe and hidden nature of difeafes are beyond our ken, and it is equally abfurd and ufelefs to attempt their inveftigation. All that is neceffary to their cure is plain and ob¬ vious, and requires no deep or philofo- phical refearches. We know the ail¬ ments to which the human body is inci¬ dent ; we are acquainted alfo with a va¬ riety of active remedies; and ufe alone hath taught us to adapt the one to the other. Thus argue the empirics; with a fagacity adequate to the rank of beings, to which by their contempt of reafon they degrade themfelves. The fubjedt however is worthy of an attentive exa¬ mination. There