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.
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