These are faults, however, which must be imputed to individuals only; and it is not my intention to waste reproof upon the dregs of the medical profession, or to call attention to the ignorance displayed by that crew,[2506] the violation of all regimen in their treatment of disease, the evasions practised in the use of warm baths, the strict diet they imperiously prescribe, the food that is crammed into these same patients, exhausted as they are, several times a day; together with a thousand other methods of showing how quick they are to change their mind, their precepts for the regulation of the kitchen, and their recipes for the composition of unguents, it being one grand object with them to lose sight of none of the usual incitements to sensuality. The importation of foreign merchandize, and the introduction of tariffs settled by foreigners,[2507] would have been highly displeasing to our ancestors, I can readily imagine; but it was not these inconveniences that Cato had in view, when he spoke thus strongly in condemnation of the medical art. “Theriace”[2508] is the name given to a preparation devised by luxury; a composition formed of six hundred[2509] different ingredients; and this while Nature has bestowed upon us such numbers of remedies, each of which would have fully answered the purpose employed by itself! The Mithridatic[2510] antidote is composed of four and fifty ingredients, none of which are used in exactly the same proportion, and the quantity prescribed is in some cases so small as the sixtieth part of one denarius! Which of the gods, pray, can have instructed man in such trickery as this, a height to which the mere subtlety of human invention could surely never have reached? it clearly must emanate from a vain ostentation of scientific skill and must be set down as a monstrous system of puffing off the medical art. And yet, after all, the physicians themselves do not understand this branch of their profession; and I have ascertained that it is a common thing for them to put mineral vermilion[2511] in their medicines, a rank poison, as I shall have occasion[2512] to show when I come to speak of the pigments, in place of Indian cinnabar, and all because they mistake the name of the one drug for that of the other! These, however, are errors which only concern the health of individuals, while it is the practices which Cato foresaw and dreaded, less dangerous in themselves and little regarded, practices, in fact, which the leading men in the art do not hesitate to avow, that have wrought[2513] the corruption of the manners of our empire.