The initial treatment of enterobacterial diarrhea is usually empiric.
Empiric means that the doctor treats the patient on the basis of the visible symptoms and professional experience in treating infections, without waiting for laboratory test results.
Oncologists prescribe patients one standard empiric chemotherapy regimen after another, until they find one that works.
During the middle ages the empiric spirit was in abeyance, but it revived from the time of Francis Bacon and was systematized especially in the English philosophers, Locke, Hume, the two Mills,.
His book on Materialism and Empiric Criticism (1909) heaps abuse on idealistic philosophers and religious teachers of all schools and creeds.