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 salt-petre,——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. C H A P. XXXV “THE two great causes, which conspire with each other to shorten life, says lord _Verulam_, are first—— “The internal spirit, which like a gentle flame wastes the body down to death:—And secondly, the external air, that parches the body up to ashes:—which two enemies attacking us on both sides of our bodies together, at length destroy our organs, and render them unfit to carry on the functions of life.” This being the state of the case, the road to longevity was plain; nothing more being required, says his lordship, but to repair the waste committed by the internal spirit, by making the substance of it more thick and dense, by a regular course of opiates on one side, and by refrigerating the heat of it on the other, by three grains and a half of salt-petre every morning before you got up.—— Still this frame of ours was left exposed to the inimical assaults of the air without;—but this was fenced off again by a course of greasy unctions, which so fully saturated the pores of the skin, that no spicula could enter;——nor could any one get out.——This put a stop to all perspiration, sensible and insensible, which being the cause of so many scurvy distempers—a course of clysters was requisite to carry off redundant humours,—and render the system complete. What my father had to say to my lord of _Verulam_’s opiates, his salt-petre, and greasy unctions and clysters, you shall read,—but not to-day—or to-morrow: time presses upon me,—my reader is impatient—I must get forwards——You shall read the chapter at your leisure (if you chuse it), as soon as ever the _Tristra-pædia_ is published.—— Sufficeth it, at present to say, my father levelled the hypothesis with the ground, and in doing that, the learned know, he built up and established his own.—— C H A P. XXXVI