Last week I saw a woman
flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her person
for the worse. Yesterday I ordered the carcass of a beau to be
stripped in my presence, when we were all amazed to find so many
unsuspected faults under one suit of clothes. Then I laid open his
brain, his heart, and his spleen, but I plainly perceived at every
operation that the farther we proceeded, we found the defects
increase upon us, in number and bulk; from all which I justly formed
this conclusion to myself, that whatever philosopher or projector
can find out an art to sodder and patch up the flaws and
imperfections of Nature, will deserve much better of mankind and
teach us a more useful science than that so much in present esteem,
of widening and exposing them (like him who held anatomy to be the
ultimate end of physic). And he whose fortunes and dispositions
have placed him in a convenient station to enjoy the fruits of this
noble art, he that can with Epicurus content his ideas with the
films and images that fly off upon his senses from the superfices of
things, such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature, leaving the sour
and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.
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