t to be
doubted,' as Pliny says, 'that physicians, desiring to raise a name by
their discoveries, make experiments upon us, and thus barter away our
lives. There is no law for punishing their extreme ignorance. They learn
their trade at our expense, they make some progress in the art of
curing; and they alone are permitted to murder with impunity.' Holy
father! consider as your enemies the crowd of physicians who beset you.
It is in our age that we behold verified the prediction of the elder
Cato, who declared that corruption would be general when the Greeks
should have transmitted the sciences to Rome, and, above all, the
science of healing. Whole nations have done without this art. The Roman
republic, according to Pliny, was without physicians for six hundred
years, and was never in a more flourishing condition."

The Pope, a poor dying old man, communicated Petrarch's letter
immediately to his physicians, and it kindled in the whole faculty a
flame of indignation, worthy of being described by Moliere. Petrarch
made a general enemy of the physicians, though, of course, the weakest
and the worst of them were the first to attack him. One of them told
him, "You are a foolhardy man, who, contemning the physicians, have no
fear either of the fever or of the malaria." Petrarch replied, "I
certainly have no assurance of being free from the attacks of either;
but, if I were attacked by either, I should not think of calling in
physicians."

His first assailant was one of Clement's own physicians, who loaded him
with scurrility in a formal letter. These circumstances brought forth
our poet's "Four Books of Invectives against Physicians," a work in
which he undoubtedly exposes a great deal of contemporary quackery, but
which, at the same time, scarcely leaves the physician-hunter on higher
ground than his antagonists.

In the last year of his life, Clement VI. wished to attach our poet
permanently to his court by making him his secretary, and Petrarch,
after much coy refusal, was at last induced, by the solicitations of
his friends, to accept the office. But before he could enter upon it, an
objection to his filling it was unexpectedly started. It was discovered
that his style was too lofty to suit the humility of the Roman Church.
The elevation of Petrarch's style might be obvious, but certainly the
humility of the Church was a bright discovery. Petrarch, according to
his own account, so far from promising to bring down his