Disputationes chymico-medicae

THE PHILOSOPHER, OR THE PHYSICIAN CONSULTED BY NATURE.

Medicine, accompanied by these arts, will eventually be led home happily and with great applause, if other things succeed.

But truly, just as in the playing of flutes a strong and powerful breath alone is not enough, but the entire difficulty depends on the skillful mobility of the fingers to create harmony; so it matters little that our Philosopher-Physician is generally informed by Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, and Mathematics, unless he gradually accommodates those very things—already collected into one bundle from the free generosity of the primary arts—both to other external aids and to the very motion of Nature which he will attack in due time. We lead the Physician who consults Nature step by step to the shrine of Nature, triumphant with those blessed spoils of Reason and Speech, Number and Measure. We show him the riches of Physics from afar and open the way.

But forgive me, physicists of any Academy, if I do not entrust the young Physician to your discipline as completely as I had previously emancipated him to the Grammarians, Logicians, Orators, and Mathematicians. Forgive me, I say; for that right which you seem to have over Nature is not equal to the rights and privileges which those craftsmen possess in the subjects under them. We reason, speak, count, and measure only by the laws prescribed by Reason, Speech, Number, and Measure. But what is the method in the Schools of Physics? What rule, what balance holds the tiller in explaining physical things skillfully and as they truly are in Nature? If anyone, carried in his mind to the highest region of the world, should thoroughly perceive the heavens and the lands and everything contained in them, and then turn to the Acroasin lectures of Aristotle, the Prince of the Peripatetics, he will find in the eight books of Physics scarcely eight verses of physical truth. Instead, he will see logical sophisms about Causes and Principles in the first and second

books. In the third and fifth books, he will see sophisms about the effects of Causes. In the fourth, he will see them regarding the subject of place, its adjuncts, and time. In the third part of the fourth book, and in the sixth, he will see monsters of infinity. In the seventh and eighth, he will see monsters of eternity rather than mysteries. These things are not only entirely foreign to the liberal discipline of Physics, but are also strongly opposed to piety and religion. Are not all these things debated today in the Schools of Physics at the Universities? Do not the pulpits daily ring with these same ideas with great spirit? The other subjects are treated with no better philosophy, whether they are about materia prima first matter, the Elements and their primary and secondary qualities, or the generations and decay of things. This applies to things that happen in the heavens or things contained within the entire circuit of the earth. And yet, they shout until they are hoarse that our Medicine is subordinate to these comments and that its true foundations are drawn from them. Truly, such proponents seem to me like nitedulis glow-worms or fireflies hiding in thickets, emitting an uncertain and meager glow in the middle of summer. In their preconceived opinions about physical things, they rule and shine alone, like the one-eyed among the blind. But they avoid and flee from difficult matters which must be sought from the very light of Nature, just as owls flee the light of the Sun. They have no other excuse for not appearing in public than that it is a sin to depart from the opinions introduced in the Schools. This was not the true face of things. It was a laborious face that should not have been covered by a shadow-like and fabricated veil of obscurity. Dark things should not have been thrown headlong through even darker explanations, nor wrapped in thicker shadows, lest all power of seeing be taken away from our eyes, which are already dim and weakened by original sin. For the later age has labored more than the former; and while the sciences grow along with intellects, a wiser offspring later wiped away many of the most foul errors of the Pagans, like a second sponge. Thus there is no doubt that more things are still hidden in the treasures of wisdom and nature, to be unearthed by the efforts of sagacious men, than have ever been accessible to our senses. Did the ancient ages feel ashamed