Long Life, Short Art

A decorative printer's ornament featuring symmetrical scrollwork and a central circle.

and could see the cleverness of his followers and the commentators of his books. He himself would surely enter into my opinion, that life is now to be called long and Art, indeed, short—and short for this reason: because nearly all actions of the human body are derived from mechanical, static, hydraulic, and hydrostatic principles; and the powers of medicines from chemical principles, by the help of which the inventory of the three kingdoms mineral, vegetable, and animal is tested by the scales; and their use is to be derived from the diligent experience of practitioners with cautions. Had the great Hippocrates been distinguished by these, he would have been greater, according to the Illustrious Baron Van Swieten Gerard van Swieten, physician to Empress Maria Theresa, of pious memory. Meanwhile, no one will deny that Hippocrates lit the torch, and that the greatest minds of succeeding centuries have collected its rays as if in a caustic mirror. For this reason, since it is ordained by the most healthy Academic Institute that a candidate for the Doctorate degree must produce a public specimen, I have taken it upon myself to defend that art is short but life is long, in three chapters: namely, Doctrine, Inventions, and Experience. Wherefore it happens.