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But, come now, nobody hears us confess, the system which prescribes drugs, drugs, drugs at every visit and in every case, and does not give a severe selection of esculents the first place, but only the second or third, must be rotten at the core. Don't you despise a layman's eye. All the professions want it." "Well, you are a writer; publish a book, call it Medicina laici, and send me a copy."
My readers will, I have no doubt, like to be satisfied, by comparing them: and, at any rate, it may entertain them to read verses composed by our great metaphysician, when a Bachelor in Physick. Febriles aestus, victumque ardoribus orbem Flevit, non tantis par Medicina malis. Et post mille artes, medicae tentamina curae, Ardet adhuc Febris; nec velit arte regi.
The memory of this great investigator has not been helped by the English edition of his "De Statica Medicina," not his best work, with a frontispiece showing the author in his dietetic balance. Full justice has been done to him by Dr. Weir Mitchell in an address as president of the Congress of Physicians and Surgeons, 1891.
The fellowship between the arts of healing and cooking is brought to our recollection by a leonine verse at the end of one of the shorter separate collections above described: "Explicit de Coquina Quae est optima Medicina." The "Form of Cury" will amply remunerate a study. It presents the earliest mention, so far as I can discern, of olive oil, cloves, mace, and gourds.
The ideal system, no doubt, was that of Miss Ashwell, who gave a long list of pieces in the programme with numbers to them, and then had the number appropriate to the particular work hoisted before it was played. This is only the ideal in one sense. In reality, the best course is suggested by a famous maxim: "Optima medicina est medicina non uti."
Their talismanic character seems to be sufficiently proved by the English medical manuscript preserved at Stockholm, already alluded to, in which, among various cabalistic prescriptions, is one “for peynes in theth.... Boro berto briore + vulnera quinque dei sint medicina mei + Tahebal + Ghether + + + Othman.” The last word should probably be read Guthman, and it is succeeded by five crosses, possibly in allusion to the five wounds of the Saviour.
Bernard Gordon, probably also an Englishman, was one of the great lights in medicine down at Montpellier, and his book, "Lilium De Medicina," is well known.
or of the helplessness of medicine in time of plague, "Mussabat tacito medicina timore." These are a few examples of a power present throughout, filling his reasonings with a vivid reality far removed from the conventional rhetoric of most philosopher poets. His language is Thucydidean in its chiselled outline, its quarried strength, its living expressiveness.
I could have lent him the "Medicina Statica," with its frontispiece showing Sanctorius with his dinner on the table before him, in his balanced chair which sunk with him below the level of his banquet-board when he had swallowed a certain number of ounces, an early foreshadowing of Pettenkofer's chamber and quantitative physiology, but the "Opera Omnia" of Sanctorius I had never met with, and I fear he had to do without it.
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