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THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY
SUBSECT. V.-- Compound Alteratives; censure of
Compounds, and mixed Physic.
Pliny, lib. 24. c. 1, bitterly taxeth all compound medicines, "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 blame in their compositions, whilst they make infinite
variety of mixtures, as 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 "In which many vain, superfluous, corrupt, exolete, things out of date are to be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 "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 Mat. Riccius, in that flourishing
commonwealth of China, "their physicians give precepts quite opposite to ours, not unhappy in
their physic; they use altogether roots, herbs, and simples in their medicines, and all their physic
in a manner is comprehended in a herbal: no science, no school, no art, no degree, but like a
trade, every man in private is instructed of his master." Cardan cracks that he can cure all
diseases with water alone, as Hippocrates of old did most infirmities with one medicine. Let the
best of our rational physicians demonstrate and give a sufficient reason for those intricate
mixtures, why just so many simples in mithridate or treacle, why such and such quantity; may
they not be reduced to half or a quarter? Frustra fit per plura (as the saying is) quod fieri potest
per pauciora; 300 simples in a julep, potion, or a little pill, to what end or purpose? I know not
what Alkindus, Capivaccius, Montagna, and Simon Eitover, the best of them all and most
rational, have said in this kind; but neither he, they, nor any one of them, gives his reader, to my
judgment, that satisfaction which he ought; why such, so many simples? Rog. Bacon hath taxed
many errors in his tract de graduationibus, explained some things, but not cleared. Mercurialis in
his book de composit. medicin. gives instance in Hamech, and Philonium Romanum, which
Hamech an Arabian, and Philonius a Roman, long since composed, but crasse as the rest. If they
be so exact, as by him it seems they were, and those mixtures so perfect, why doth Fernelius alter
the one, and why is the other obsolete? Cardan taxeth Galen for presuming out of his ambition to
correct Theriachum Andromachi, and we as justly may carp at all the rest. Galen's medicines are
now exploded and rejected; what Nicholas Meripsa, Mesue, Celsus, Scribanius, Actuarius, &c.
writ of old, are most part contemned. Mellichius, Cordus, Wecker, Quercetan, Renodeus, the
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