Originally one of three ancient schools of medicine (neither the Dogmatics nor the Methodists). From, oh, the sixteenth to somewhere in the eighteenth c., meant about what it does now (an experimentalist; one whose beliefs about the physical world are based on observation). After that it picked up a derogatory tone because Physicians were theoreticians, not "rude empirics". And in the eighteenth and ninteenth c. it was used as a boast and an accusation with all the scruple one expects of advertising and faction.
I looked it up because I was surprised by "rude empiric" in one of the naval novels. I suppose surgeons and apothecaries were allowed to be empirics.
O'Brien is not cited by the OED for 'empiric', but he is a source for 'obnubilate'.
So wrote clew in Word. | TrackBack