Causes and Effects, and making one Discovery confess another, while by the Aids of Chymistry, and innumerable Experiments, they endeavoured to learn the Properties and Energy of Things. This was certainly to act like Men of Reason and Reflection; for if any substantial and solid Scheme of natural Philosophy, that will abide the Test, and satisfy judicious Men, shall ever be produced by human Industry, it must be done this Way, by which the Compiler of it will have sufficient Observations and Experiments as Vouchers, to warrant and uphold all his Positions.
And as the Knowledge of experimental Philosophy is greatly to be prefer’d to that of the Student, who deals in empty Speculations and scholastick Chimeras; so are the Acquisitions and Endowments of the experimental Physician, who has formed his Method of Practice upon sufficient Experience and Observations on the Nature, Progress, and various Symptoms of Diseases, as well as on the Operations and Force of Medicines, far more valuable than the abstruse and unsupported Notions of one, who owes all his Endowments to an active Imagination, and the contemplative Labour of the Closet. It is for this Reason that Dr. Sydenham, who built all his
