(6) In the inquiry of diseases, they do abandon the cures of many, some as in their nature incurable, and others as past the period of cure; so that Sylla and the Triumvirs never proscribed so many men to die, as they do by their ignorant edicts: whereof numbers do escape with less difficulty than they did in the Roman prescriptions. Therefore I will not doubt to note as a deficience, that they inquire not the perfect cures of many diseases, or extremities of diseases; but pronouncing them incurable do enact a law of neglect, and exempt ignorance from discredit.
(7) Nay further, I esteem it the office of a physician not only to restore health, but to mitigate pain and dolors; and not only when such mitigation may conduce to recovery, but when it may serve to make a fair and easy passage. For it is no small felicity which Augustus Cæsar was wont to wish to himself, that same _Euthanasia_; and which was specially noted in the death of Antoninus Pius, whose death was after the fashion, and semblance of a kindly and pleasant sheep. So it is written of Epicurus, that after his disease was judged desperate, he drowned his stomach and senses with a large draught and ingurgitation of wine; whereupon the epigram was made, _Hinc Stygias ebrius hausit aquas_; he was not sober enough to taste any bitterness of the Stygian water. But the physicians contrariwise do make a kind of scruple and religion to stay with the patient after the disease is deplored; whereas in my judgment they ought both to inquire the skill, and to give the attendances, for the facilitating and assuaging of the pains and agonies of death.
(5) In the consideration of the cures of diseases, I find a deficience in the receipts of propriety, respecting the particular cures of diseases: for the physicians have frustrated the fruit of tradition and experience by their magistralities, in adding and taking out and changing _quid pro qua_ in their receipts, at their pleasures; commanding so over the medicine, as the medicine cannot command over the disease. For except it be treacle and _mithridatum_, and of late _diascordium_, and a few more, they tie themselves to no receipts severely and religiously. For as to the confections of sale which are in the shops, they are for readiness and not for propriety. For they are upon general intentions of purging, opening, comforting, altering, and not much appropriate to particular diseases. And this is the cause why empirics and old women are more happy many times in their cures than learned physicians, because they are more religious in holding their medicines. Therefore here is the deficience which I find, that physicians have not, partly out of their own practice, partly out of the constant probations reported in books, and partly out of the traditions of empirics, set down and delivered over certain experimental medicines for the cure of particular diseases, besides their own conjectural and magistral descriptions. For as they were the men of the best composition in the state of Rome, which either being consuls inclined to the people, or being tribunes inclined to the senate; so in the matter we now handle, they be the best physicians, which being learned incline to the traditions of experience, or being empirics incline to the methods of learning.