(..)Paracelsus and some few other sooty Empiricks, rather then (as they are fain to call themselves) Philosophers, having their eyes darken'd, and their Brains troubl'd with the smoke of their own Furnaces, began to rail at the Peripatetick Doctrine, which they were too illiterate to understand ….
John Locke
Swallow down opinions as silly people do empirics' pills.
2002, (w), The Great Nation, Penguin 2003, p.33:
To the disgust of doctors, the royal family at Versailles allowed one Brun, a wandering empiric…, to administer a proprietary ‘sovereign remedy’ to the ailing monarch.