Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 18, 2025
Giles Firman, now in England, did make and read upon very well." Giles Firmin, as the name is commonly spelled, practised physic in this country for a time. He seems to have found it a poor business; for, in a letter to Governor Winthrop, he says, "I am strongly sett upon to studye divinitie: my studyes else must be lost, for physick is but a meene helpe."
'Locus est et phiribus Umbris. Hor. I am sometimes very much troubled, when I reflect upon the three great Professions of Divinity, Law, and Physick; how they are each of them over-burdened with Practitioners, and filled with Multitudes of Ingenious Gentlemen that starve one another. We may divide the Clergy into Generals, Field-Officers, and Subalterns.
Here is then another new work. There the Doctor must be presently fetcht, and according to what he pleases to order, either a Glister must be set, or some other Physick taken for it.
This review is justly reckoned one of the finest specimens of criticism in our language, and was read with such eagerness, when published in the Literary Magazine, that the author was induced to reprint it in a small volume by itself; a circumstance which appears to have escaped Mr. Boswell's research. New Practice of Physick. From the Literary Magazine, 1756. From the Literary Magazine, 1756.
Many particularities are of importance to one man, though they appear trifling to another; and it is always more safe to admit copiousness, than to affect brevity. Many informations will be afforded by this book to the biographer. I know not where else it can be found, but here, and in Ward, that Cowley was doctor in physick.
About the same time that he became bachelor of physick, he obtained, by the interest of a relation, a fellowship of All Souls' college, having submitted, by the subscription required, to the authority of the visitors appointed by the parliament, upon what principles, or how consistently with his former conduct, it is now impossible to discover.
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."
Susan gave him his physick in the morning, and I went into his bed-chamber about eight o'clock; then I found him charming well. Susan says that on my father's wanting gruel on the Wednesday, I said, as they were busy at ironing, they might give him some of the same he had before.
After having practised physick some years, he was admitted expectant at the Hôtel-Dieu, where he was regularly to have been made pensionary physician upon the first vacancy; but mere unassisted merit advances slowly, if, what is not very common, it advances at all.
Since this was written the attainder has been reversed; and Nicholas Barnewall is now a peer of Ireland with this title. The person mentioned in the text had studied physick, and prescribed gratis to the poor. Hence arose the subsequent conversation. See Franklin's Autobiography for his conversion from vegetarianism. See ante, ii. 217, where Johnson advised Boswell to keep a journal.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking