a Microscope, then by the most tender and delicate Hand.  Perhaps, a Physitian might, by several other tangible proprieties, discover the constitution of a Body as well as by the Pulse.  I do but instance in these, to shew what possibility there may be of many others, and what probability and hopes there were of finding them, if this method were followed; for the Offices of the five Senses being to detect either the subtil and curious Motions propagated through all pellucid or perfectly homogeneous Bodies; Or the more gross and vibrative Pulse communicated through the Air and all other convenient mediums, whether fluid or solid:  Or the effluvia of Bodies dissolv’d in the Air; Or the particles of bodies dissolv’d or dissoluble in Liquors, or the more quick and violent shaking motion of heat in all or any of these:  whatsoever does any wayes promote any of these kinds of criteria, does afford a way of improving some one sense.  And what a multitude of these would a diligent Man meet with in his inquiries?  And this for the helping and promoting the sensitive faculty only.

Next, as for the Memory, or retentive faculty, we may be sufficiently instructed from the written Histories of civil actions, what great assistance may be afforded the Memory, in the committing to writing things observable in natural operations.  If a Physitian be therefore accounted the more able in his Faculty, because he has had long experience and practice, the remembrance of which, though perhaps very imperfect, does regulate all his after actions:  What ought to be thought of that man, that has not only a perfect register of his own experience, but it grown old with the experience of many hundreds of years, and many thousands of men.

And though of late, men, beginning to be sensible of this convenience, have here and there registred and printed some few Centuries, yet for the most part they are set down very lamely and imperfectly, and, I fear, many times not so truly, they seeming, several of them, to be design’d more for Ostentation then publique use:  For, not to instance, that they do, for the most part, omit those Experiences they have made, wherein their Patients have miscarried, it is very easie to be perceiv’d, that they do all along hyperbolically extol their own Prescriptions, and vilifie those of others.  Notwithstanding all which, these kinds of Histories are generally esteem’d useful, even to the ablest Physitian.