rt. 2.
cap. 9._ Audernacus, Libavius, Quercetanus, Oswaldus Crollius, Euvonymus,
Rubeus, and Matthiolus in the fourth book of his Epistles, Andreas a Blawen
_epist. ad Matthiolum_, as commended and formerly used by Avicenna,
Arnoldus, and many others: [4167]Matthiolus in the same place approves of
potable gold, mercury, with many such chemical confections, and goes so far
in approbation of them, that he holds [4168] "no man can be an excellent
physician that hath not some skill in chemistical distillations, and that
chronic diseases can hardly be cured without mineral medicines:" look for
antimony among purgers.

SUBSECT. V.--_Compound Alteratives; censure of Compounds, and mixed
Physic_.

Pliny, _lib. 24. c. 1_, bitterly taxeth all compound medicines, [4169]
"Men's knavery, imposture, and captious wits, have invented those shops, in
which every man's life is set to sale: and by and by came in those
compositions and inexplicable mixtures, far-fetched out of India and
Arabia; a medicine for a botch must be had as far as the Red Sea." And 'tis
not without cause which he saith; for out of question they are much to
[4170]blame in their compositions, whilst they make infinite variety of
mixtures, as [4171]Fuchsius notes. "They think they get themselves great
credit, excel others, and to be more learned than the rest, because they
make many variations; but he accounts them fools, and whilst they brag of
their skill, and think to get themselves a name, they become ridiculous,
betray their ignorance and error." A few simples well prepared and
understood, are better than such a heap of nonsense, confused compounds,
which are in apothecaries' shops ordinarily sold. "In which many vain,
superfluous, corrupt, exolete, things out of date are to be had" (saith
Cornarius); "a company of barbarous names given to syrups, juleps, an
unnecessary company of mixed medicines;" _rudis indigestaque moles_. Many
times (as Agrippa taxeth) there is by this means [4172]"more danger from
the medicine than from the disease," when they put together they know not
what, or leave it to an illiterate apothecary to be made, they cause death
and horror for health. Those old physicians had no such mixtures; a simple
potion of hellebore in Hippocrates' time was the ordinary purge; and at
this day, saith [4173]Mat. Riccius, in that flourishing commonwealth of
China, "their physicians give precepts quite opposite to ours, not unhappy
in their physic; they u