empiric

1. Empirical.

empiric (plural empirics)

1. (historical) A member of a sect of ancient physicians who based their theories solely on experience.
2. Someone who is guided by empiricism; an empiricist.
3. Any unqualified or dishonest practitioner; a charlatan; a quack.
   • 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, OCLC 54573970 ↗:

     , New York Review, Books, 2001, p.257:

     An empiric oftentimes, and a silly chirurgeon, doth more strange cures than a rational physician.

   • 1661, Robert Boyle, The Sceptical Chymist, p.24:

     […] 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 […]

   • 1689 (indicated as 1690)​, [John Locke], chapter 4, in An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Thomas Basset, […], OCLC 153628242 ↗, book I, page 20 ↗:

     Swallow down opinions as silly people do empiric;s' pills.

   • 2002, Colin Jones (historian), 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.