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THE SECOND BOOKE 581
brought to a quotidian ague, without them should have
had a continuall feaver. They must needes thrive in
their businesses since all ills redownd to their profit.
Truely they have reason to require of the pacient an
application of favourable confidence in them: which
must necessarily be in good earnest and yeelding to
apply it selfe unto imaginations, over-hardly to be
believed, Plato said very well and to the purpose, that
freely to lie belonged onely to physitians, since our
health dependeth on their vanitie and falsehood of
promises. AEsope, an author of exceeding rare excellence,
and whose graces few discover, is very pleasant
in representing this kinde of tyrannicall authority unto
us, which they usurpe upon poore soules, weakned by
sickenes and overwhelmed through feare: for he
reporteth how a sicke man, being demaunded by his
physitian what operation he felt by the physicke he
had given him: ' I have sweate much/ answered he.
'That is good,' replied the physitian. Another time
he asked him againe how he had done since : ' I have
had a great cold and quivered much/ said he. ' That
is very well,' quoth the physitian againe. The third
time he demaunded of him how he felt himselfe, he
answered: ' I swell and puffe up as it were with the
dropsie.' 'That's not amisse,' said the physitian. A
familiar friend of his comming afterward to visite him,
and to know how hee did. 'Verily,' said he, 'my
friend, I die with being too too well.' There was a
more equall law in AEgypt, by which for the first three
dayes the physitian tooke the patient in hand upon the
patients perill and fortune; but the three dayes expired,
it was at his owne. For, what reason is there
thatiEsculapius their patrone must havebeene strucken
with thunder, forsomuch as he recovered Hippolitus
from death to life ?
Nam pater omnipotent aliquem indignatus ab umbris,
Mortalem infernia ad lumma surgere vita,
Ipse repertorem medicines talis, et aitiz
Fulmine Phabigenam Stygias detrusit ad vndas. 1
1 VIRG. AEn. 1. vii. 770.