. Annals of medical history. ient that has confi-dence in him than the most learned andexperienced that he is not acquainted even the very choice of most of theirdrugs is in some sort mysterious and di-vine. He cites articles of the prevalentpharmacopeia—the left foot of a tortoise,the urine of an elephant, the liver of a mole,etc., and for us who have the stone (soscornfully they use us in our miseries) theexcrement of rats beaten to powder andsuch like trash and fooleries which rathercarry a face of magical enchantment thanany solid science. I omit the odd number of their pills, the
. Annals of medical history. ient that has confi-dence in him than the most learned andexperienced that he is not acquainted even the very choice of most of theirdrugs is in some sort mysterious and di-vine. He cites articles of the prevalentpharmacopeia—the left foot of a tortoise,the urine of an elephant, the liver of a mole,etc., and for us who have the stone (soscornfully they use us in our miseries) theexcrement of rats beaten to powder andsuch like trash and fooleries which rathercarry a face of magical enchantment thanany solid science. I omit the odd number of their pills, the appointment of certain days,feasts of the year, the superstition of gather-ing simples at certain hours. . Whoever saw one physician approve of anothersprescription without taking something awayor adding something to it? Montaigne knew his history of medicineand points out the mistakes of physicians,the discrepancies in their teachings fromHippocrates and Hcrophilus to Argenteriusand Paracelsus. (The latters dogmatism. Small seal used by Large olTiciuI seal. The arms arc: Montaigne in personal cor- On a field azure, ten trefoils or, bear- respondence and in com- ing a lions paw of the same, armed munications to Henry iv. gules, per fesse. and conceit are known to Montaigne.) Theart of physic is not so resolved that we needbe without authority for what we do; itchanges according to the climates and themoons, according to Fernel and LEscale.(Of Experience.) How often do we seephysicians impute the death of their pa-tients to one another. After a recent visi-tation of the plague which swept away aninfinite number of men the most famousphysician of all the country published abook confessing that blood letting in thatdisease was the cause of so many the rational practice of medicineis no easy matter he readily concedes. If we but consider the occasions upon whichthey usually ground the cause of our diseases,they are so light and nice that I thence con-clude a very
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