But that is not all: The force of physick goes farther than the body, and is of use in relieving the mind under most of its disorders: and this I dare venture to affirm, having frequently made the experiment upon my own person with never failing success; and this I did by the direction of my worthy parish minister, who is indeed an excellent divine, and withal an able physician; and a good physician, only to be the better divine. That good man has often quieted my conscience with an emetick, has dissipated troublesome thoughts with a cordial or exhilarating drops, has cured me of a love fit by breathing a vein, and removed anger and revenge by the prescription of a draught, thence called bitter; and, in these and other instances, has convinced me, that physick is of use to the very soul, as far as that depends on the crasis of the body:
Mentem sanari corpus ut ægrum
Cernimus, et flecti Medicinâ posse videmus.
LUCRET.
And I am so fully persuaded of this, that I never see a wretch go to execution, but I lament that he had not been in the hands of a good physician, who would have corrected those peccant humours of his body which brought him to that untimely death.
Now can any thing like this be pleaded in behalf of one or the other of the two laws we are dealing with, or of both together? By the way, I must observe here, that these two laws, civil and canon, are put in couples for their unluckiness, and, I think, they ought to be muzzled too. And here lies the disadvantage of the present dispute: physick, we know, is a plain simple thing: now that this single
