in extremes, the middle sort approve of minerals, though not in so high a degree.  Lemnius lib. 3. cap. 6. de occult. nat. mir. commends gold inwardly and outwardly used, as in rings, excellent good in medicines; and such mixtures as are made for melancholy men, saith Wecker, antid. spec. lib. 1. to whom Renodeus subscribes, lib. 2. cap. 2. Ficinus, lib. 2. cap. 19. Fernel. meth. med. lib. 5. cap. 21. de Cardiacis.  Daniel Sennertus, lib. 1. part. 2. cap. 9. Audernacus, Libavius, Quercetanus, Oswaldus Crollius, Euvonymus, Rubeus, and Matthiolus in the fourth book of his Epistles, Andreas a Blawen epist. ad Matthiolum, as commended and formerly used by Avicenna, Arnoldus, and many others:  [4167]Matthiolus in the same place approves of potable gold, mercury, with many such chemical confections, and goes so far in approbation of them, that he holds [4168] “no man can be an excellent physician that hath not some skill in chemistical distillations, and that chronic diseases can hardly be cured without mineral medicines:”  look for antimony among purgers.

SUBSECT.  V.—­Compound Alteratives; censure of Compounds, and mixed Physic.

Pliny, lib. 24. c. 1, bitterly taxeth all compound medicines, [4169] “Men’s knavery, imposture, and captious wits, have invented those shops, in which every man’s life is set to sale:  and by and by came in those compositions and inexplicable mixtures, far-fetched out of India and Arabia; a medicine for a botch must be had as far as the Red Sea.”  And ’tis not without cause which he saith; for out of question they are much to [4170]blame in their compositions, whilst they make infinite variety of mixtures, as [4171]Fuchsius notes.  “They think they get themselves great credit, excel others, and to be more learned than the rest, because they make many variations; but he accounts them fools, and whilst they brag of their skill, and think to get themselves a name, they become ridiculous, betray their ignorance and error.”  A few simples well prepared and understood, are better than such a heap of nonsense, confused compounds, which are in apothecaries’ shops ordinarily sold.  “In which many vain, superfluous, corrupt, exolete, things out of date are to be had” (saith Cornarius); “a company of barbarous names given to syrups, juleps, an unnecessary company of mixed medicines;” rudis indigestaque moles.  Many times (as Agrippa taxeth) there is by this means [4172]"more danger from the medicine than from the disease,” when they put together they know not what, or leave it to an illiterate apothecary to be made, they cause death and horror for health.  Those old physicians had no such mixtures; a simple potion of hellebore in Hippocrates’ time was the ordinary purge; and at this day, saith [4173]Mat.  Riccius, in that flourishing commonwealth of China, “their physicians give precepts quite opposite to ours, not unhappy in their physic; they use altogether roots,