ubbers. The country people use kitchen physic, and
common experience tells vis, that they live freest from all manner of
infirmities, that make least use of apothecaries' physic. Many are
overthrown by preposterous use of it, and thereby get their bane, that
might otherwise have escaped: [4084]some think physicians kill as many as
they save, and who can tell, [4085]_Quot Themison aegros autumno occiderit
uno_? "How many murders they make in a year," _quibus impune licet hominem
occidere_, "that may freely kill folks," and have a reward for it, and
according to the Dutch proverb, a new physician must have a new churchyard;
and who daily observes it not? Many that did ill under physicians' hands,
have happily escaped, when they have been given over by them, left to God
and nature, and themselves; 'twas Pliny's dilemma of old, [4086]"every
disease is either curable or incurable, a man recovers of it or is killed
by it; both ways physic is to be rejected. If it be deadly, it cannot be
cured; if it may be helped, it requires no physician, nature will expel it
of itself." Plato made it a great sign of an intemperate and corrupt
commonwealth, where lawyers and physicians did abound; and the Romans
distasted them so much that they were often banished out of their city, as
Pliny and Celsus relate, for 600 years not admitted. It is no art at all,
as some hold, no not worthy the name of a liberal science (nor law
neither), as [4087]Pet. And. Canonherius a patrician of Rome and a great
doctor himself, "one of their own tribe," proves by sixteen arguments,
because it is mercenary as now used, base, and as fiddlers play for a
reward. _Juridicis, medicis, fisco, fas vivere rapto_, 'tis a corrupt
trade, no science, art, no profession; the beginning, practice, and
progress of it, all is naught, full of imposture, uncertainty, and doth
generally more harm than good. The devil himself was the first inventor of
it: _Inventum est medicina meum_, said Apollo, and what was Apollo, but the
devil? The Greeks first made an art of it, and they were all deluded by
Apollo's sons, priests, oracles. If we may believe Varro, Pliny, Columella,
most of their best medicines were derived from his oracles. Aesculapius his
son had his temples erected to his deity, and did many famous cures; but,
as Lactantius holds, he was a magician, a mere impostor, and as his
successors, Phaon, Podalirius, Melampius, Menecrates, (another God), by
charms, spells, and ministr