ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 117 



excited to pursue this matter as far as the nature of things will 

 permit; since to pronounce diseases incurable, is to establish 

 negligence and carelessneess, as it were, by a law, and screen 

 ignorance and reproach. 



And, further, we esteem it the office of a physician to mitigate 

 the pains and tortures of diseases, as well as to restore health ; 

 and this not only when such a mitigation, as of a dangerous 

 symptom, may conduce to recovery ; but, also, when there be- 

 ing no further hopes of recovery, it can only serve to make the 

 passage out of life more calm and easy. For that complacency 

 in death, which Augustus Caesar so much desired, is no small 

 felicity.* This was also observed in the death of Antoninus 

 Pius, who seemed not so much to die as to fall into a deep and 

 pleasing sleep. And it is delivered of Epicurus, that he pro- 

 cured himself this easy departure; for, after his disease was 

 judged desperate, he intoxicated himself with wine, and died in 

 that condition, which gave rise to the epigram : 



" Hinc Stygias ebrius transit aquas."' 



But the physicians of our times make a scruple of attending the 

 patient after the disease is thought past cure, though, in my 

 judgment, if they were not wanting to their own profession and 

 to humanity itself, they should here give their attendance to 

 improve their skill, and make the dying person depart with 

 greater ease and tranquillity. We, therefore, set down as defi- 

 cient an inquiry after a method of relieving the agonies of the 

 dying, calling it by the name of euthanasia exteriori, to distin- 

 guish it from the internal composure, procured to the soul in 

 death. 



Again, we generally find this deficiency in the cures of dis- 

 eases, that though the present physicians tolerably pursue the 

 general intentions of cures, yet they have no particular medi- 

 cines, which, by a specific property regard particular diseases ; 

 for they lose the benefit of traditions and approved experience 

 by their authoritative procedure in adding, taking away, and 

 changing the ingredients of their receipts at pleasure, after the 

 manner of apothecaries substituting one thing for another, and 

 thus haughtily commanding medicine, so that medicine can 

 no longer command the disease. For except Venice treacle, 

 mithridate, diascordium, the confection of alkermes, and a few 

 more, they commonly tie themselves strictly to no certain re- 



