o the cure of our
maladies. The Egyptians had reason to reject this general trade of
physician, and to divide the profession: to each disease, to each part of
the body, its particular workman; for that part was more properly and
with less confusion cared for, seeing the person looked to nothing else.
Ours are not aware that he who provides for all, provides for nothing;
and that the entire government of this microcosm is more than they are
able to undertake. Whilst they were afraid of stopping a dysentery, lest
they should put the patient into a fever, they killed me a friend,
--[Estienne de la Boetie.]--who was worth more than the whole of them.
They counterpoise their own divinations with the present evils; and
because they will not cure the brain to the prejudice of the stomach,
they injure both with their dissentient and tumultuary drugs.

As to the variety and weakness of the rationale of this art, they are
more manifest in it than in any other art; aperitive medicines are proper
for a man subject to the stone, by reason that opening and dilating the
passages they help forward the slimy matter whereof gravel and stone are
engendered, and convey that downward which begins to harden and gather in
the reins; aperitive things are dangerous for a man subject to the stone,
by reason that, opening and dilating the passages, they help forward the
matter proper to create the gravel toward the reins, which by their own
propension being apt to seize it, 'tis not to be imagined but that a
great deal of what has been conveyed thither must remain behind;
moreover, if the medicine happen to meet with anything too large to be
carried through all the narrow passages it must pass to be expelled, that
obstruction, whatever it is, being stirred by these aperitive things and
thrown into those narrow passages, coming to stop them, will occasion a
certain and most painful death. They have the like uniformity in the
counsels they give us for the regimen of life: it is good to make water
often; for we experimentally see that, in letting it lie long in the
bladder, we give it time to settle the sediment, which will concrete into
a stone; it is good not to make water often, for the heavy excrements it
carries along with it will not be voided without violence, as we see by
experience that a torrent that runs with force washes the ground it rolls
over much cleaner than the course of a slow and tardy stream; so, it is
good to have often to do