They have seen me and heard me, arraigned me in these fetters and
received the evidence; I have cut up mine own anatomy, dissected myself,
and they are gone to read upon me. O how manifold and perplexed a thing,
nay, how wanton and various a thing, is ruin and destruction! God
presented to David three kinds, war, famine and pestilence; Satan left
out these, and brought in fires from heaven and winds from the
wilderness. If there were no ruin but sickness, we see the masters of
that art can scarce number, not name all sicknesses; every thing that
disorders a faculty, and the function of that, is a sickness; the names
will not serve them which are given from the place affected, the
pleurisy is so; nor from the effect which it works, the falling sickness
is so; they cannot have names enough, from what it does, nor where it
is, but they must extort names from what it is like, what it resembles,
and but in some one thing, or else they would lack names; for the wolf,
and the canker, and the polypus are so; and that question whether there
be more names or things, is as perplexed in sicknesses as in any thing
else; except it be easily resolved upon that side that there are more
sicknesses than names. If ruin were reduced to that one way, that man
could perish no way but by sickness, yet his danger were infinite; and
if sickness were reduced to that one way, that there were no sickness
but a fever, yet the way were infinite still; for it would overload and
oppress any natural, disorder and discompose any artificial, memory, to
deliver the names of several fevers; how intricate a work then have they
who are gone to consult which of these sicknesses mine is, and then
which of these fevers, and then what it would do, and then how it may be
countermined. But even in ill it is a degree of good when the evil will
admit consultation. In many diseases, that which is but an accident, but
a symptom of the main disease, is so violent, that the physician must
attend the cure of that, though he pretermit (so far as to intermit) the
cure of the disease itself. Is it not so in states too? Sometimes the
insolency of those that are great puts the people into commotions; the
great disease, and the greatest danger to the head, is the insolency of
the great ones; and yet they execute martial law, they come to present
executions upon the people, whose commotion was indeed but a symptom,
but an accident of the main disease; but this symptom, grown so violent,
would allow no time for a consultation. Is it not so in the accidents of
the diseases of our mind too? Is it not evidently so in our affections,
in our passions? If a choleric man be ready to strike, must I go about
to purge his choler, or to break the blow? But where there is room for
consultation things are not desperate. They consult, so there is nothing
rashly, inconsiderately done; and then they prescribe, they write, so
there is nothing covertly, disguisedly, unavowedly done. In bodily
diseases it is not always so; sometimes, as soon as the physician's foot
is in the chamber, his knife is in the patient's arm; the disease would
not allow a minute's forbearing of blood, nor prescribing of other
remedies. In states and matter of government it is so too; they are
sometimes surprised with such accidents, as that the magistrate asks not
what may be done by law, but does that which must necessarily be done in
that case. But it is a degree of good in evil, a degree that carries
hope and comfort in it, when we may have recourse to that which is
written, and that the proceedings may be apert, and ingenuous, and
candid, and avowable, for that gives satisfaction and acquiescence. They
who have received my anatomy of myself consult, and end their
consultation in prescribing, and in prescribing physic; proper and
convenient remedy; for if they should come in again and chide me for
some disorder that had occasioned and induced, or that had hastened and
exalted this sickness, or if they should begin to write now rules for my
diet and exercise when I were well, this were to antedate or to postdate
their consultation, not to give physic. It were rather a vexation than a
relief, to tell a condemned prisoner, You might have lived if you had
done this; and if you can get your pardon, you shall do well to take
this or this course hereafter. I am glad they know (I have hid nothing
from them), glad they consult (they hid nothing from one another), glad
they write (they hide nothing from the world), glad that they write and
prescribe physic, that there are remedies for the present case.