[406]
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
1
medication of diseases before the time of Herodicus. But Herodicus
2
was a trainer and became a valetudinarian, and blended
406b
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.
3
A noble prize
4
indeed for his science, he said.
406c
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
5
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.
406d
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 6 or the use of cautery or the knife. But if anyone prescribes for him a long course of treatment with swathings 7 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, 406e 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. 8 For such a man, he said, that appears to be the right use of medicine.
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 6 or the use of cautery or the knife. But if anyone prescribes for him a long course of treatment with swathings 7 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, 406e 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. 8 For such a man, he said, that appears to be the right use of medicine.
Republic. Plato. Paul Shorey (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1935-37.
Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.
Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.