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Physick, for the most part, is nothing else but the Substitute of Exercise or Temperance. Medicines are indeed absolutely necessary in acute Distempers, that cannot wait the slow Operations of these two great Instruments of Health; but did Men live in an habitual Course of Exercise and Temperance, there would be but little Occasion for them.
His reputation now began to bear some proportion to his merit, and extended itself to distant universities; so that, in 1703, the professorship of physick being vacant at Groningen, he was invited thither; but he refused to leave Leyden, and chose to continue his present course of life.
It was an extreme satisfaction to him that his wife had attained unto a considerable skill in physick and chirurgery, which enabled her to dispense many safe, good and useful medicines unto the poor that had occasion for them; and some hundreds of sick and weak and maimed people owed praises to God for the benefit which therein they freely received of her.
Thomas Shepherd, the pious minister of Cambridge, referring to the great need of medical instruction for the Indians, used these words: "I have thought in my heart that it were a singular good work, if the Lord would stirre up the hearts of some or other of his people in England to give some maintenance toward some Schoole or Collegiate exercise this way, wherein there should be Anatomies and other instructions that way, and where there might be some recompence given to any that should bring in any vegetable or other thing that is vertuous in the way of Physick.
I shall reproduce illustrations of some of these processes and pieces of apparatus, and quote a few of the directions, given in a book, published in 1664, called The Art of Distillation, by John French, Dr. in Physick. VI. p. 80.
At length, his propension to the study of physick grew too violent to be resisted; and, though he still intended to make divinity the great employment of his life, he could not deny himself the satisfaction of spending some time upon the medical writers, for the perusal of which he was so well qualified by his acquaintance with the mathematicks and philosophy.
His notoriety brought on him the ire of a "licens'd practitioner in physick and surgery," one J. Spinke, who, in a pamphlet entitled "Quackery Unmask'd" , dealt Marten some most uncourteous blows. From the pamphlet, it is difficult to judge whether Spinke or Marten were the greater quack; we should judge the former.
For my own part I intend to hunt twice a week during my stay with Sir Roger; and shall prescribe the moderate use of this exercise to all my country friends as the best kind of physick for mending a bad constitution, and preserving a good one. I cannot do this better, than in the following lines out of Mr. Dryden.
There are, besides the above-mentioned, innumerable Retainers to Physick, who, for want of other Patients, amuse themselves with the stifling of Cats in an Air Pump, cutting up Dogs alive, or impaling of Insects upon the point of a Needle for Microscopical Observations; besides those that are employed in the gathering of Weeds, and the Chase of Butterflies: Not to mention the Cockle-shell-Merchants and Spider-catchers.
Thus it came to pass that no man of his day was more often applied to for counsel and relief by persons laboring under mental depression than himself. He has left behind him a very curious and not uninstructive discourse, which he entitled The Cure of Melancholy, by Faith and Physick, in which he shows a great degree of skill in his morbid mental anatomy.
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