De metallorum ortu & causis

is dry and earthy. Also, all ash, of whatever thing it may be, always remains dry. Therefore, the ash of crab's eyes is by no means a remedy for quartan fevers, but rather intensifies them, just as experience has taught many people perhaps not far from here, to whom this medicine pharmacun drug or medicine was administered. Furthermore, the Paracelsians Paracelsici followers of the physician Paracelsus are more than ridiculous, for to cure a quartan fever they administer a single dose of one and a half drachms of this ash, mixed with other things, to the patient at once, though the whole of Lake Geneva lacus Lemanus could scarcely supply so many crab's eyes. But let those "good men" be off with their follies and deceptions. Close to these are the Empirics Empirici practitioners relying on experience rather than theory, whose crowd has grown so large today that it has almost overwhelmed the good name of physicians. Of these, there are two types: one group is entirely ignorant of all the disciplines most necessary for a physician (if we believe Hippocrates and Galen) and even of the first rudiments of grammar