12 BRITISH PHYSICIANS. health by his skilful advice." In another letter, and on another occasion, he writes to him again from Paris, to beg that he would have the good- ness to send him the prescription of a medicine, which Linacre had ordered for him while in Lon- don, but which his stupid servant had left at the apothecary's shop, and so lost. These are proofs of the esteem in which his skill was held, by one of the wisest men of the age in which he lived ; and as the medical writings he has left are only translations, we must form our judgment of his talents as a physician, by the universal reputation he acquired among his contemporaries, for skill in the practice of his art. An instance of his saga- city is recorded in a prognostic he made concern- ing his friend Lily, the grammarian whose certain death he foretold, if he should consent to the excision of a malignant tumour on his hip ; and the event verified his prediction. Erasmus, in a letter to Bilibaldus Pirckheimerus, gives a very particular account of the manner in which he was reheved by the direction of Linacre in a fit of the gravel ; and the rational simplicity of the me- thod offers a favourable specimen of his medical practice. He says, Linacre, whose assiduity in attendance was equal to his knowledge, sent for an apothecary to his sick chamber, and caused him in his presence to prepare the following re- medy : — Camomile flowers and parsley were tied up in a linen cloth, and boiled in a vessel of pure water, till half the liquor was exhausted ; the cloth was then wrung out, and apphed hot to the affected part, and ease was presently procured. In a violent attack, this remedy, on the second
