‘If we inquire into the Improvements which have been made by the Moderns, we shall be forced to confess that we have so little Reason to value ourselves beyond the Antients, or to be tempted to contemn them, that we cannot give stronger or more convincing Proofs of our own Ignorance, as well as our Pride. ‘Among all the systematical Writers, I think there are very few who refuse the Preference to _Hieron, Fabricius ab Aquapendente_, as a Person of unquestion’d Learning and Judgment; and yet is he not asham’d to let his Readers know that _Celsus_ among the Latins, _Paulus Aegineta_ among the Greeks, and _Albucasis_ among the Arabians, whom I am unwilling to place among the Moderns, tho’ he liv’d but six hundred Years since, are the Triumvirate to whom he principally stands indebted, for the Assistance he had receiv’d from them in composing his excellent Book. ‘[In a previous paragraph are puffs of Galen, Hippocrates, and other débris of the Old Silurian Period of Medicine.] How many Operations are there now in Use which were unknown to the Antients?’ That is true. The surest way for a nation’s scientific men to prove that they were proud and ignorant was to claim to have found out something fresh in the course of a thousand years or so. Evidently the people of this book’s day regarded themselves as children, and their remote ancestors as the only grown-up people that had existed. Consider the contrast: without offence, without over-egotism, our own scientific men may and do regard themselves as grown people and their grandfathers as children. The change here presented is probably the most sweeping that has ever come over mankind in the history of the race. It is the utter reversal, in a couple of generations, of an attitude which had been maintained without challenge or interruption from the earliest antiquity. It amounts to creating man over again on a new plan; he was a canal boat before, he is an ocean greyhound to-day. The change from reptile to bird was not more tremendous, and it took longer. It is curious. If you read between the lines what this author says about Brer Albucasis, you detect that in venturing to compliment him he has to whistle a little to keep his courage up, because Albucasis ‘liv’d but six hundred Years since,’ and therefore came so uncomfortably near being a ‘modern’ that one couldn’t respect him without risk.