Page:A Treatise upon the Small-Pox.pdf/25

In a Word all the Benefit, that can arrive, by the Translation of Hippocrates or any antient Author in Physick, is only to exhibit the State of Physick in its Birth and Infancy, that the Reader may see its Weakness and Imperfections, compared with its present mature State, and so may please as an Historian; but surely none can imagine that the present Physicians can receive thence any Lights for their Improvement: If any should think so, for some Men have a strange Way of Thinking, and a great Dexterity in deviating from the Right, let them learn the Weakness of that Author from his two most celebrated Pieces, his Book of Fevers, and that of Aphorisms. As to his Book of Fevers there is no Account given in it of the Nature, nor of the different Kinds of that Disease, nor any Method of Cure, nor any Medicines proper and beneficial to suppress it: My Reader will here begin to wonder and cry out, what then does his Work contain? Why nothing but an obscure and involved History of several Cases that fell under his Observation, and a Recital of their Symptoms, and Complaints from Day to Day; and is that sufficient to denominate a Man a great Physician, which

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