usand others, who do not employ physicians, physicians usurp to
themselves: and as to ill accidents, they either absolutely disown them,
in laying the fault upon the patient, by such frivolous reasons as they
are never at a loss for; as "he lay with his arms out of bed," or "he was
disturbed with the rattling of a coach:"

"Rhedarum transitus arcto
Vicorum inflexu:"

["The passage of the wheels in the narrow
turning of the street"--Juvenal, iii. 236.]

or "somebody had set open the casement," or "he had lain upon his left
side," or "he had some disagreeable fancies in his head": in sum, a word,
a dream, or a look, seems to them excuse sufficient wherewith to palliate
their own errors: or, if they so please, they even make use of our
growing worse, and do their business in this way which can never fail
them: which is by buzzing us in the ear, when the disease is more
inflamed by their medicaments, that it had been much worse but for those
remedies; he, whom from an ordinary cold they have thrown into a double
tertian-ague, had but for them been in a continued fever. They do not
much care what mischief they do, since it turns to their own profit.
In earnest, they have reason to require a very favourable belief from
their patients; and, indeed, it ought to be a very easy one, to swallow
things so hard to be believed. Plato said very well, that physicians
were the only men who might lie at pleasure, since our health depends
upon the vanity and falsity of their promises.

AEsop, a most excellent author, and of whom few men discover all the
graces, pleasantly represents to us the tyrannical authority physicians
usurp over poor creatures, weakened and subdued by sickness and fear,
when he tells us, that a sick person, being asked by his physician what
operation he found of the potion he had given him: "I have sweated very
much," says the sick man. "That's good," says the physician. Another
time, having asked how he felt himself after his physic: "I have been
very cold, and have had a great shivering upon me," said he. "That is
good," replied the physician. After the third potion, he asked him again
how he did: "Why, I find myself swollen and puffed up," said he, "as if
I had a dropsy."--"That is very well," said the physician. One of his
servants coming presently after to inquire how he felt himself, "Truly,
friend," said he, "with being t