Vesalius,
Bartholine, and Fallopius; and, to acquaint himself more fully with
the structure of bodies, was a constant attendant upon Nuck's publick
dissections in the theatre, and himself very accurately inspected the
bodies of different animals.

Having furnished himself with this preparatory knowledge, he began to
read the ancient physicians, in the order of time, pursuing his
inquiries downwards, from Hippocrates through all the Greek and Latin
writers.

Finding, as he tells us himself, that Hippocrates was the original
source of all medical knowledge, and that all the later writers were
little more than transcribers from him, he returned to him with more
attention, and spent much time in making extracts from him, digesting
his treatises into method, and fixing them in his memory.

He then descended to the moderns, among whom none engaged him longer,
or improved him more, than Sydenham, to whose merit he has left this
attestation, "that he frequently perused him, and always with greater
eagerness."

His insatiable curiosity after knowledge engaged him now in the
practice of chymistry, which he prosecuted with all the ardour of a
philosopher, whose industry was not to be wearied, and whose love of
truth was too strong to suffer him to acquiesce in the reports of
others.

Yet did he not suffer one branch of science to withdraw his attention
from others: anatomy did not withhold him from chymistry, nor
chymistry, enchanting as it is, from the study of botany, in which he
was no less skilled than in other parts of physick. He was not only a
careful examiner of all the plants in the garden of the university,
but made excursions, for his further improvement, into the woods and
fields, and left no place unvisited, where any increase of botanical
knowledge could be reasonably hoped for.

In conjunction with all these inquiries, he still pursued his
theological studies, and still, as we are informed by himself,
"proposed, when he had made himself master of the whole art of
physick, and obtained the honour of a degree in that science, to
petition regularly for a license to preach, and to engage in the cure
of souls;" and intended, in his theological exercise, to discuss this
question, "why so many were formerly converted to Christianity by
illiterate persons, and so few at present by men of learning."

In pursuance of this plan he went to Hardewich, in order to take the
degree of doctor in physick, which he obtained