O Maruts holding Barhiṣa (ritual grass)! What medicine is in Sindhu, in Asiknī, in the Seas, and the Mountains? Finding them, please bring them with you. Please help us to cure the afflicted and make what has gone wrong in them, right again!
Rigveda, 8.20.25. Quoted inRivers of Rig-Veda by Jijith Nadumuri Ravi.
Dat Galenus opes, dat Justinianus honores, Sed genus species cogitur ire pedes.
The rich Physician, honor'd Lawyers ride, Whil'st the poor Scholar foots it by their side.
Robert Burton,The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), I. 2. 3. 15. Quoted by Dr. Robert F. Arnold. A like saying may be found in Franciscus Floridus Sabinus—Lectiones Subcisive, Book I, Chapter I. Also John Owen—Medicus et I. C.
'Tis not amiss, ere ye're giv'n o'er, To try one desp'rate med'cine more; For where your case can be no worse, The desp'rat'st is the wisest course.
Samuel Butler,Epistle of Hudibras to Sidrophel, line 5.
Learn'd he was in medic'nal lore, For by his side a pouch he wore, Replete with strange hermetic powder That wounds nine miles point-blank would solder.
Samuel Butler,Hudibras, Part I (1663-64), Canto II, line 223.
This is the way that physicians mend or end us, Secundum artem: but although we sneer In health—when ill, we call them to attend us, Without the least propensity to jeer.
Better to hunt in fields for health unbought, Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught. The wise for cure on exercise depend; God never made his work for man to mend.
John Dryden,Epistle to John Dryden of Chesterton, line 92.
So liv'd our sires, ere doctors learn'd to kill, And multiplied with theirs the weekly bill.
Even as a Surgeon, minding off to cut Some cureless limb, before in use he put His violent Engins on the vicious member, Bringeth his Patient in a senseless slumber, And grief-less then (guided by use and art), To save the whole, sawes off th' infected part.
One doctor, singly like the sculler plies, The patient struggles, and by inches dies; But two physicians, like a pair of oars, Waft him right swiftly to the Stygian shores.
Quoted by Garth,The Dispensary.
A single doctor like a sculler plies, And all his art and all his physic tries; But two physicians, like a pair of oars, Conduct you soonest to the Stygian shores.
Epigrams Ancient and Modern. Edited by Rev. John Booth, London, 1863, p. 144. Another version signed D, (probably John Dunscombe) in note to Nichols' Select Collection of Poems.
"Is there no hope?" the sick man said, The silent doctor shook his head, And took his leave with signs of sorrow, Despairing of his fee to-morrow.
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 fishes.
So modern 'pothecaries, taught the art By doctor's bills to play the doctor's part, Bold in the practice of mistaken rules, Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.
Alexander Pope,Moral Essays (1731-35), Epistle III, line 330.
You tell your doctor, that y' are ill And what does he, but write a bill, Of which you need not read one letter, The worse the scrawl, the dose the better. For if you knew but what you take, Though you recover, he must break.
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart?
Therein the patient Must minister to himself. Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it.
If thou couldst, doctor, cast The water of my land, find her disease, And purge it to a sound and pristine health, I would applaud thee to the very echo, That should applaud again.
I do remember an apothecary,— And hereabouts he dwells,—whom late I noted In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows, Culling of simples; meagre were his looks, Sharp misery had worn him to the bones: And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, An alligator stuff'd, and other skins Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves A beggarly account of empty boxes, Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds, Remnants of packthread and old cakes of roses, Were thinly scatter'd to make up a show.
He (Tiberius) was wont to mock at the arts of physicians, and at those who, after thirty years of age, needed counsel as to what was good or bad for their bodies.
Tacitus,Annals, Book VI, Chapter XLVI. Same told bySuetonius,Life of Tiberius, Chapter LXVIII.
But nothing is more estimable than a physician who, having studied nature from his youth, knows the properties of the human body, the diseases which assail it, the remedies which will benefit it, exercises his art with caution, and pays equal attention to the rich and the poor.
