the mouth, the teeth, and the other passages, into the inward parts, whilst its external properties make their way in together with it-whatever be its quality as it flows in, of the same nature is the effect it disseminates in the recipient, so that when any one looks upon beauty with envy, he fills the circumambient air with a malignant property, and diffuses upon his neighbour the breath issuing from himself, all impregnated with bitterness, and this, being as it is of a most subtile nature, penetrates through into the very bone and marrow. . . . Consider also, my Charicles, how many people have been infected with ophthalmia, how many with other pestilential diseases, not from any contact with those so affected, or from sharing the same bed or same table, but merely from breathing the same air. . . . And if some give the stroke of the Evil Eye even to those they love and are well disposed towards, you must not be surprised, for people of an envious disposition act not as they wish, but as their Nature compels them to do." Even amongst nonsuperstitious moderns the "evil eye" (in the form of a disagreeable "stare") has sometimes been potent enough to produce death (by a duel!). The old saying, “A cat may look at a king," should not be acted on when persons pathologically sensitive to being looked at ("ophthalmophobia") are concerned. The medical profession has always been and will always be peculiarly exposed to satire, because the "healing art" struggles against disease and death, and because death, by the inexorable laws of nature, must in every case, sooner or later, win the battle. With reference to the powerlessness of drugs to avert death we have the Mediaeval rhyming ("Leonine ") hexameter: "Contra vim mortis non est medicamen in hortis." There is likewise a "Leonine" hexameter contradictory to the above: "Non timor mortis cui salvia crescit in hortis." The latter, however, is really only a rhyming explanation of the name, salvia (sage), which is derived from the Latin word, salvus (safe). Cf. also, in the "Schola Salernitana":" Cur moriatur homo cui salvia crescit in horto?" The old proverb, "Physician, heal thyself" (St. Luke iv. 23), is indeed almost unanswerable (see, however, further on), for in the end Death always comes for the physician himself, as he is represented doing in the various famous "Dance of Death" series. In reality, however, St. Luke's 'Iaтρè Oeрáπevσоv σeavтóv only meant, Physician, treat yourself," like the Vulgate version, "Medice, cura teipsum." (Similarly, the saying, "Medicus curat, natura sanat," means, "The physician treats-cares for-nature heals—cures." A favourite phrase in the writings of the great French surgeon, Ambroise Paré, was: "I treated him, God cured him.") As Shakespeare (Cymbeline, Act v., Scene 5) says, “By medicine life may be prolonged, yet death will seize the doctor too." In a dirge, Shakespeare likewise reminds us:- "The sceptre, learning, physic, must Hans Sachs, the "Meistersänger" of Nürnberg, in his poem, Der Tod ein End aller irdischen Ding, describes the position of medicine towards death at somewhat greater length. He makes the "Healing Art" say "Ich bin nur ein Hilf der Natur, Die Krankheit zu arzneien nur. Wo Glück mitwirkt, da hab ich Kraft; Sunst hilft kein Fleiss noch Meisterschaft." If the work of medical and allied sciences be regarded as unending warfare against the forces of disease and death, that is to say, premature death of any kind, it is death from real old age and really natural causes that is the true object to be aimed at, and, for practical purposes in life, such death may be regarded as no death at all. Cicero (De Senectute, xix) makes Cato major say (I here give the excellent translation in T. Bodley Scott's The Road to a Healthy Old Age, London, 1917, p. 36):-" Again, just as apples, when unripe, are torn from trees, but, when ripe and mellow, drop down, so it is violence that takes life from young men, ripeness from old. This ripeness is so delightful to me, that, as I approach nearer to death, I seem, as it were, to be sighting 66 land, and to be coming to port at last after a long voyage." 'Ripeness is all," according to Shakespeare's King Lear (Act v., Scene 2), where Edgar says to his father, the Earl of Gloster: "Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither: Such considerations furnish the best answer to many of the satirical sayings and caricature designs directed against the legitimate claims of medical and surgical practice (including general hygiene and preventive measures). Ripeness and a "natural," almost painless, death constitute an ideal to be aimed at (even if one feels indifferent in regard to one's own fate) an almost painless death preceded by an old age, serene and bright," such as Wordsworth invoked for a young lady, "Dear Child of Nature," in the following well-known lines (which I venture to quote, though I must confess extreme ignorance as to the climatology of Lapland and what its nights are like): "But an old age serene and bright, And lovely as a Lapland night, Cf. Milton (Paradise Lost, Book xi., line 535):— "So may'st thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop Gather'd, not harshly pluck'd, for death mature." 66 For analogous similes in Homer's Iliad and in the Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, cf. Part I. D. = We need not here allude to all the proverbs, epigrams, epitaphs, witty tales, and cheap jokes of the "chestnut " kind ancient and modern that exist in dispraise of the doctor. They mostly hint at the cure (i.e. "cura treatment), or the doctor, being as bad as, or worse than, the disease ("Pessimus morbus est medicus"-so also "Young doctors kill their patients, and old doctors allow them to die"), and suggest that the doctor sometimes, from ignorance or carelessness, does more harm than good, and thus unwittingly plays into the hands of Death. Many satirical epigrams and caricatures might be traced to moody and cynical humour (and grotesque remarks, with an element of truth in them) of the doctors and surgeons themselves. In the first part of Goethe's Faust, when Dr. Faust is walking on Easter morning with his "famulus," Wagner, the latter refers to the respect and gratitude shown by the peasants In diesen Thälern, diesen Bergen Ich habe selbst den Gift an Tausende gegeben; Dass man die frechen Mörder lobt." : Scientists, physicians and surgeons, in certain moods, half in earnest, half in jest (pour épater le bourgeois), have indeed often launched disparaging remarks against their own efforts and against their own professions. Mr. William Wale tells me that Oliver Wendell Holmes, the genial "Autocrat of the Breakfast-table," said in a lecture before the Harvard Medical School: "I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind, and all the worse for the sea." Another medical writer, I think, suggested that it might be a good thing for the world if the great medical library of the surgeon-general's office in Washington, perhaps the largest medical library-at all events, in regard to modern literature-in the world, were to suffer the fate which overtook the great library of Alexandria in Egypt. 275 275 According to Edward Gibbon (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter xxviii.), the great library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed under Theophilus, Archbishop of Alexandria, in A.D. 391. Gibbon throws doubt on the generally accepted account of the Arabic historian, Abulpharagius, that the library was burned in A.D. 640 by order of the Caliph, Omar I. According to Julius Caesar's last Commentary the greater part of the (Royal) library was unfortunately burned when Caesar, in B.C. 48, successfully set fire to the fleet of King Ptolomy XII, at Alexandria. A typical modern pseudo-epitaph in the style of the satirical epigrams in the Greek Anthology is that on the quack doctor whom Charon did not wish to ferry across the Styx, because in the upper world he was so useful in sending down passengers for Hades (Nugae Canorae, by the London surgeon, William Wadd, 1827, epitaph 55)— "This quack to Charon would his penny pay: The grateful ferryman was heard to say'Return, my friend! and live for ages more, Or I must haul my useless boat ashore.' Uncomplimentary epitaphs like this were doubtless suggested by the very complimentary lines on a physician, by Lucilius, or by similar lines on various physicians, in the Greek Anthology. An English translation of Lucilius's epigram (Anthol. Graec. Palat., xi. 281) is given by H. P. Dodd 276: "When Magnus passed below, Dis, trembling, said, This Magnus was probably a physician at the Roman Imperial Court. J. D. Rolleston 2 quotes three epigrams from the Greek Anthology illustrating the same fancy of a physician emptying Hades. The first (Anth. Graec. Plan., 270) is an epigram by Magnus (? the abovementioned physician) on a statue of Galen: "There was a time when, thanks to thee, Galen, the earth received men mortal and reared them up immortal, and the halls of Acheron were empty owing to the power of thy healing hand." The second is an epigram by an anonymous writer (Anth. Graec. Append., Tauchnitz edition, 1829, 119) at the end of an hexameter poem on Asklepiades: "The physician Asklepiades has gone to the home of the blessed, and has left desolation and solitude among the dead." The third epigram is by Crinagoras on the statue of Praxagoras (Anth. Graec. Plan., 273): "The son of Phoebus implanted in your breast, Praxagoras, the knowledge of the healing art. All the ills which arise from long fevers and the balms to place on the wounded skin, thou hast learnt from his gentle wife, Epione. If mortals had a few physicians like thee, the barque of Charon would not have to cross the Styx." Cf. the anonymous epigram on the physician Oribasius (Anthol. Graec. Palat., ix. 199). Epigrams in this ultra-laudatory style (cf. Part II. Headings xix., xx.) on the famous dead-patriots, poets, philosophers, painters, sculptors, physicians, &c. - constituted much admired, elegant and fanciful, conceits in ancient times, and may be matched during the Italian 276 H. P. Dodd, Epigrammatists, London, 1870, p. 50. 277 J. D. Rolleston, Proc. Royal Society of Medicine, Section of the History of Medicine, 1914, vii. p. 8. |