Chap. 8.] EYILS FEOM THE PEACTTCE 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 bargg^ins made with their patients while 
their fate is trembling in the balance, the tariffs jframed 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 with 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 from his 
exile in Gaul, acquired a sum equally large 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- 
5^ Nothing could possibly be more remote from his republican notions, 
than *' reginae " at Rome. 
^1 "Emovendam." In order that a future job may be ensured. 
*2 In c. 5 of this Book. Vulnerum medico.*' 
" Ejus turbae." »^ See B. xxiv* c. 1. 
