being then so far from the
infirmity, how could that small part of his substance wherewith he made
me, carry away so great an impression for its share? and how so
concealed, that till five-and-forty years after, I did not begin to be
sensible of it? being the only one to this hour, amongst so many
brothers and sisters, and all by one mother, that was ever troubled with
it. He that can satisfy me in this point, I will believe him in as many
other miracles as he pleases; always provided that, as their manner is,
he do not give me a doctrine much more intricate and fantastic than the
thing itself for current pay.

Let the physicians a little excuse the liberty I take, for by this same
infusion and fatal insinuation it is that I have received a hatred and
contempt of their doctrine; the antipathy I have against their art is
hereditary. My father lived three-score and fourteen years, my
grandfather sixty-nine, my great-grandfather almost fourscore years,
without ever tasting any sort of physic; and, with them, whatever was not
ordinary diet, was instead of a drug. Physic is grounded upon experience
and examples: so is my opinion. And is not this an express and very
advantageous experience. I do not know that they can find me in all
their records three that were born, bred, and died under the same roof,
who have lived so long by their conduct. They must here of necessity
confess, that if reason be not, fortune at least is on my side, and with
physicians fortune goes a great deal further than reason. Let them not
take me now at a disadvantage; let them not threaten me in the subdued
condition wherein I now am; that were treachery. In truth, I have enough
the better of them by these domestic examples, that they should rest
satisfied. Human things are not usually so constant; it has been two
hundred years, save eighteen, that this trial has lasted, for the first
of them was born in the year 1402: 'tis now, indeed, very good reason
that this experience should begin to fail us. Let them not, therefore,
reproach me with the infirmities under which I now suffer; is it not
enough that I for my part have lived seven-and-forty years in good
health? though it should be the end of my career; 'tis of the longer
sort.

My ancestors had an aversion to physic by some occult and natural
instinct; for the very sight of drugs was loathsome to my father. The
Seigneur de Gaviac, my uncle by the father's side, a churchman, and a
va