To follow what we difapprove, and act in contradiction to our own feelings, to be afraid of doing juftice and speaking truth, argues the most temporifing and flavish conformity to customs, "more honored in the "breach than the obfervance." I can fay with great truth, that I have long thought fomething like the following work might be productive of general good, and that nothing, in my power, has been wanting to make it anfwer that defirable and important end. Werewomen as attentive to the inestimable Bleffings of Health, as the capricious extremes of novelty and fashion, it would be fortunate for themselves and their offspring; but as this is rather to be wished than expected, it may be neceffary to put them in mind, that although Health does not altogether constitute Beauty; Beauty is the Child of Health, and cannot long exist without her parental influence. In vain they would strive to preserve one, without due re gard gard to the other: the great fecret of improving Beauty confifts in the art of preferving Health: 'Tis that which animates and lights up the countenance with expreffive fmiles, which touches the lip with vermilion, and diffuses o'er the cheeks a freshness and vivid glow furpaffing Circaffian bloom. It gives fweetness to the breath, and luftre to the eye; but let fickness and disease overshadow the beauteous form, and its appearance is no longer retained; the snowy whiteness of the fkin is exchanged for a fallow hue, the luftre of the eye is tarnished, and the blooming cheek will fade! Is it not then to be lamented, that the true value of Health is feldom fufficiently regarded, till it is either impaired, or irretrievably loft? Was it further neceffary to fhew the importance of Health, and its estimation among the wifeft people in all ages; we need only take a view of the means they devised to attain it. In In the infancy of phyfic, the Ægyptians and Chaldæans first introduced the method of placing the fick in public ftreets and highways, in order to receive information from travellers paffing by, in what manner they had been cured of the like difeafes. Herodotus tells us, the Babylonians obliged themselves by a law to observe the fame wife custom. In Greece it alfo prevailed, where offerings on votive tables were hung up in the temple of Æfculapius the God of phyfic, whereon the name of the disease and medicines which cured it were engra ved and recorded for the public good. From those rude outlines, the venerable Hippocrates collected his Aphorifms, fo juftly admired for ages, and delivered down to pofterity as the very bafis of true medical knowledge. When we look back on the flender causes which gave rife to the noblest productions of nature and art, we need not be furprised, furprised, that by fuch information, great advances were made in the method of curing diseases. Those who practised in this fimple manner, were not deluded by theory or hypothefis, but judged from the evidence of their own eyes, taking it for granted, that what had cured one, might prove equally beneficial to another, under the like circumftances; and it may be remarked, that knowledge thus experimentally acquired, is more genuine, and lefs fallacious, than what we obtain by more elaborate means. It ought not therefore to be flighted because it fprings from humble fources, but rather should be confidered like gold in the mine, which lies buried with baser metals, and often is brought to light by mere chance, after human industry had fought for it in vain. In this manner, the lord of the creation, with all his boasted reason, has often been obliged to borrow information from the beafts beafts of the field, and birds of the air; according to the elegant Poet of the following lines. "Thus, then to man, the voice of Nature spake, 66 Go, from the creatures thy instruction take : "Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale.' РОРЕ After the discovery of a new world in America; the virtues of many vegetables were made known by the native favages to the Europeans, who by their superior skill in phyfic, greatly extended and improved the use of those falutary medicines; but as we have not a Specific for every disease, likè the Peruvian Bark for the cure of intermit tent fevers; 'tis evident, that great judgment is neceffary, to make one and the same medicine answer many different inten tions of cure. The |