It was indeed,
said he, a strange potion for a man in that condition.
Not strange,
said I, if you reflect that the former Asclepiads made no use of our modern coddling Footnote 1This coddling treatment of disease, which Plato affects to reprobate here, he recommends from the point of view of science in the Timaeus (89 C):
διὸ παιδαγωγεῖν δεῖ διαίταις
, etc. Cf. Euripides Orestes 883; and even in the Republic 459 C. medication of diseases before the time of Herodicus. But Herodicus Footnote 2Cf. Protagoras 316 E, Phaedrus 227 D. To be distinguished from his namesake, the brother of Gorgias in Gorgias 448 B. Cf. Cope on Aristotle Rhet. i. 5, Wilamowitz-Kiessling, Phil. Unt. xv. p. 220, Juthner, Philostratus uber Gymnastik, p. 10. was a trainer and became a valetudinarian, and blended gymnastics and medicine, for the torment first and chiefly of himself and then of many successors.How so?
he said. By lingering out his death,
said I; for living in perpetual observance of his malady, which was incurable, he was not able to effect a cure, but lived through his days unfit for the business of life, suffering the tortures of the damned if he departed a whit from his fixed regimen, and struggling against death by reason of his science he won the prize of a doting old age. Footnote 3Cf. Macaulay on Mitford’s History of Greece:
It (oligarchical government) has a sort of valetudinarian longevity; it lives in the balance of Sanctorius; it takes no exercise; it exposes itself to no accident; it is seized with a hypochondriac alarm at every new sensation; it trembles at every breath; it lets blood for every inflammation; and this, without ever enjoying a day of health or pleasure, drags out its existence to a doting and debilitated old age.
That Macaulay here is consciously paraphrasing Plato is apparent from his unfair use of the Platonic passage in his essay on Bacon. Cf. further Euripides Supp. 1109-1113; Seneca on early medicine, Epistles xv. 3 (95) 14 ff., overdoes both Spencer and Macaulay. Cf. Rousseau, Emile, Book I.: Je ne sais point apprendre à vivre à qui ne songe qu’à s’empêcher de mourir;
La Rochefoucauld (Max. 282): C’est une ennuyeuse maladie que de conserver sa santé par un trop grand régime.
A noble prize Footnote 4The pun γήρας and γέρας is hardly translatable. Cf. Pherecydes apud Diogenes Laertius i. 119
he said. χθονίῃ δὲ ὄνομα ἐγένετο Γῆ, ἐπειδὴ αὐτῇ Ζὰς γῆν γέρας διδοῖ
(vol. i. p. 124 L.C.L.). For the ironical use of καλόν cf. Euripides Cyclops 551, Sappho, fr. 53 (58). indeed for his science,The appropriate one,
said I, for a man who did not know that it was not from ignorance or inacquaintance with this type of medicine that Aesculapius did not discover it to his descendants, but because he knew that for all well-governed peoples there is a work assigned to each man in the city which he must perform, and no one has leisure to be sick Footnote 5Cf. Plutarch, De sanitate tuenda 23, Sophocles, fr. 88. 11 (?), Lucian, Nigrinus 22, differently; Hotspur’s,
Zounds! how has he the leisure to be sick?
and doctor himself all his days. And this we absurdly enough perceive in the case of a craftsman, but don’t see in the case of the rich and so-called fortunate.How so?
he said.
A carpenter,
said I, when he is sick expects his physician to give him a drug which will operate as an emetic on the disease, or to get rid of it by purging Footnote 6For ἢ κάτω cf. Chaucer,
Ne upward purgative ne downward laxative.
or the use of cautery or the knife. But if anyone prescribes for him a long course of treatment with swathings Footnote 7Cf. Blaydes on Aristophanes Acharnians 439. about the head and their accompaniments, he hastily says that he has no leisure to be sick and that such a life of preoccupation with his illess and neglect of the work that lies before him isn’t worth living. And thereupon he bids farewell to that kind of physician, enters upon his customary way of life, regains his health, and lives attending to his affairs—or, if his body is not equal to strain, he dies and is freed from all his troubles. Footnote 8This alone marks the humor of the whole passage, which Macaulay’s Essay on Bacon seems to miss. Cf. Aristophanes Acharnians 757;Apology 41 D. For such a man,
he said, that appears to be the right use of medicine.
Book 3