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xxii
The PREFACE.

any Relation, or Neighbour, or any sober and experienced Nurse can do as well as the Doctor; that is, tell when the Patient was sick in his Stomach and vomited, when griped, when his Head ached, how he slept, &c. Nay, this was what they actually did, for sure Hippocrates, who had so many Patients to attend, did not continue Night and Day with any one, to set down the Series of his various Complaints; no, he must have received his Information from those that constantly continued with the Patient, or succeeded one another in their Attendance, as our Physicians now are made acquainted with the several Symptoms and Sufferings of the Patient during their Absence by the Relation of those that were about him; and now in all this Performance, what has our Author done more than barely put down in Writing a Narrative of Facts, or Incidents, as they were communicated to him by other Hands? I am certain if Hippocrates had not had the Reputation of curing the Plague in Greece, which I imagine he never came honestly by, he had never been Deified for this Book of Fevers. It is remarkable that this antient Writer makes frequent mention of Fevers, that continued seventy or eighty

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Days,