Volume 1

The philosophy of medicine : being medical extracts on the nature and preservation of health, and on the nature and removal of disease.

  • Thornton, Robert John, 1768?-1837.
Date:
1813
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The philosophy of medicine : being medical extracts on the nature and preservation of health, and on the nature and removal of disease. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    23/662 (page 3)
    The priests, in order to support their reputation, wrote books on their pretended science, and had the art of exsp pressing the subject in a mysterious and learned jargon. Several of these obscure writers seem sensible of the re* proach, and they promise to speak plain and intelligibly j but instead of revealing, they even express their bidden secrets more obscurely than any of their predecessors. Afterwards chemistry was seized on as a source of wealth by princes, and it went from priests, into the hands of com-^ mon miners, and smelters of metals, men unacquainted with the liberal sciences, debarred from all commerce with the learned world, condemned to lead their lives in dark- ness under ground, and to support their wretched beings with coarse and hard fare. Consider these men daily ob- noxious to a thousand dangers, dreading what may happen, disturbed in mind, and leading a very uneasy life, trembling at the frequent earthquakes, the rapid torrents from the mountains, at the meteors and damps, the coruscations of the gross and sulphurous exhalations, the resoundings of the caverns, and the subterraneous bellowings. Under alj this, having no wise or prudent person to consult, who might remove their vain fears, and restore light to their troubled minds : hence they gave their attention to supers stitious tales, and fabulous stories, calculated to frighten as well as amuse, and, by increasing melancholy, froni fools became madmen. Hence was seriously taught'as part of chemistry the belief of sorceries, fascinations, inchantments, prognostics, the use of amulets, genii confined irj seals, wands, rings, allegories, emblems, types, riddles; and at Jittle truth was so blended with a large farrago of falser? hood, that the real science of chemistry became inyisibje, md nearly obliterated. The boasted pretensions of the early alchemists ^nd che= ll)ists, could not escape the just censure pf Roger Bacoit, /■