With two strokes, the one at Hippocrates , the other at Lord Verulam , did my father achieve it.
The stroke at the prince of physicians, with which he began, was no more than a short insult upon his sorrowful complaint of the Ars longa,—and Vita brevis.⸺Life short, cried my father,—and the art of healing tedious! And who are we to thank for both the one and the other, but the ignorance of quacks themselves,—and the stage-loads of chymical nostrums, and peripatetic lumber, with which, in all ages, they have first flatter’d the world, and at last deceived it?
⸺O my lord Verulam! cried my father, turning from Hippocrates , and making his second stroke at him, as the principal of nostrum-mongers, and the fittest to be made an example of to the rest,⸺What shall I say to thee, my great lord Verulam? What shall I say to thy internal spirit,—thy opium,—thy saltpetre,⸺thy greasy unctions,—thy daily purges,—thy nightly clysters, and succedaneums?
⸺My father was never at a loss what to say to any man, upon any subject; and had the least occasion for the exordium of any man breathing: how he dealt with his lordship’s opinion,⸺you shall see;⸺but when—I know not;⸺we must first see what his lordship’s opinion was.