Your extensive knowlege in every branch of useful and polite literature
will sufficiently justify the propriety of this address, though it
offers to your acceptance and protection an Essay merely medical.
Besides, the subject I have chosen is in a great measure new, and
must, I think, if successfully treated, prove highly useful. It seems
therefore peculiarly intitled to your patronage, who are so judicious,
so generous, and so zealous a promoter of every discovery which may
tend to the public good. I shall not trespass farther on your patience,
with the usual apologies of young Authors; nor on your modesty, with
the trite panegyrics of Dedicators: the whole tenour of your life has
render’d such encomiums superfluous; for you have always pursued the
shortest and the surest road to fame, the real _esse quod videri velis_.
Though by this Essay I should acquire no honour from the judicious Sons
of Æsculapius; this one however I am sure of, the subscribing myself
Your most obliged,
And most devoted servant,