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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: than a short insult upon his sorrowful complaint of the Ars longa,--and
Vita brevis.--Life short, cried my father,--and the art of healing tedious!
And who are we to thank for both the one and the other, but the ignorance
of quacks themselves,--and the stage-loads of chymical nostrums, and
peripatetic lumber, with which, in all ages, they have first flatter'd the
world, and at last deceived it?
--O my lord Verulam! cried my father, turning from Hippocrates, and making
his second stroke at him, as the principal of nostrum-mongers, and the
fittest to be made an example of to the rest,--What shall I say to thee, my
great lord Verulam? What shall I say to thy internal spirit,--thy opium,
thy salt-petre,--thy greasy unctions,--thy daily purges,--thy nightly
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