Chap. 8.] ETILS FROM THE PEACTICE OF MEDICINE. 379 



such practices as these in the City, as he did the presence of 

 royal ladies™ there. 



I will not accuse the medical art of the avarice even of its 

 professors, the rapacious bargains made with their patients while 

 their fate is trembling in the balance, the tariffs framed upon 

 their agonies, the monies taken as earnest for the dispatching 

 of patients, or the mysterious secrets of the craft. I will not 

 mention how that cataract must be couched ^^ only? in the eye, 

 in preference to extracting it at once — practices, all of them, 

 which have resulted in one very great advantage, by alluring 

 hither such a multitude of adventurers ; it being no mo- 

 deration on their part, but the rivalry existing between such 

 numbers of practitioners, that keeps their charges within mo- 

 deration. It is a well-known fact that Charmis, the phy- 

 sician*- already mentioned, made a bargain Avith a patient of 

 his in the provinces, that he should have two hundred thousand 

 sesterces for the cure ; that the Emperor Claudius extorted 

 from Alcon, the surgeon,®^ ten millions of sesterces by way of 

 fine ; and that the same man, after being recalled trom his 

 exile in Gaul, acquired a sum equally lai'ge in the course of a 

 few years. 



These are faults, however, which must be imputed to in- 

 dividuals only ; and it is not my intention to waste reproof 

 upon the dregs of the medical profession, or to call attention to 

 the ignorance displayed by that crew,^* the violation of all 

 regimen in their treatment of disease, the evasions practised in 

 the use of warm baths, the strict diet they imperiously pre- 

 scribe, the food that is crammed into these same patients, 

 exhausted as they are, several times a day ; together with a 

 thousand other methods of showing how quick they are to 

 change their mind, their precepts for the regulation of the 

 kitchen, and their recipes for the composition of unguents, 

 it being one grand object with them to lose sight of none 

 of the usual incitements to sensuality. The importation of 

 foreign merchandize, and the introduction of tariffs settled by 

 foreigners,*^ would have been highly displeasing to our ances- 



^ Nothing could possibly be more remote from his republican notions, 

 than " reginae " at Kome. 

 *i " Eraovendam." In order that a future job may be ensured. 

 52 Inc. 5 of this Book. " " Vulnerum medico." 



*' " Ejus tui-bte." " Sec E. xxiv. c. 1. 



