oo well I am about to die."

There was a more just law in Egypt, by which the physician, for the three
first days, was to take charge of his patient at the patient's own risk
and cost; but, those three days being past, it was to be at his own. For
what reason is it that their patron, AEsculapius, should be struck with
thunder for restoring Hippolitus from death to life:

"Nam Pater omnipotens, aliquem indignatus ab umbris
Mortalem infernis ad lumina surgere vitae,
Ipse repertorem medicinae talis, et artis
Fulmine Phoebigenam Stygias detrusit ad undas;"

["Then the Almighty Father, offended that any mortal should rise to
the light of life from the infernal shades, struck the son of
Phoebus with his forked lightning to the Stygian lake."
--AEneid, vii. 770.]

and his followers be pardoned, who send so many souls from life to death?
A physician, boasting to Nicocles that his art was of great authority:
"It is so, indeed," said Nicocles, "that can with impunity kill so many
people."

As to what remains, had I been of their counsel, I would have rendered my
discipline more sacred and mysterious; they begun well, but they have not
ended so. It was a good beginning to make gods and demons the authors of
their science, and to have used a peculiar way of speaking and writing,
notwithstanding that philosophy concludes it folly to persuade a man to
his own good by an unintelligible way: "Ut si quis medicus imperet, ut
sumat:"

"Terrigenam, herbigradam, domiportam, sanguine cassam."

["Describing it by the epithets of an animal trailing with its slime
over the herbage, without blood or bones, and carrying its house
upon its back, meaning simply a snail."--Coste]

It was a good rule in their art, and that accompanies all other vain,
fantastic, and supernatural arts, that the patient's belief should
prepossess them with good hope and assurance of their effects and
operation: a rule they hold to that degree, as to maintain that the most
inexpert and ignorant physician is more proper for a patient who has
confidence in him, than the most learned and experienced whom he is not
so acquainted with. Nay, even the very choice of most of their drugs is
in some sort mysterious and divine; the left foot of a tortoise, the
urine of a lizard, the dung of an elephant, the liver of a mole, blood
drawn from under the right wing of a white pigeon; and for u