CHAUCER’S DESCRIPTION OF A PHYSICIAN. THE DOCTOR OF PHYSIC.

With us there was a doctour of phisike;
In all this world, ne was there none him like
To speake of phisike and of surgerie,
For he was grounded in astronomie.
He kept his patient a full great dell
In houses: by his magike naturell
Well couth he fortune the assendent
Of his image for his pacient.
He knew the cause of every malady,
Whether it were of cold, heate, moist, or dry.
And whereof engendered was each humour.
He was a very parfit practisour;
The cause I knew, and of his haime the roote,
Anon he gave to the rich man his boot.
Full ready had he his apoticaries
To send him drugs and his lectuaries;
For each of them made other for to winne,
Their friendship was not new to beginne.
Well he knew the old Esculapius,
And Diascorides, and eke Ruffus,
And Hippocrates, and Galen,
Serapion, Rasis, and Avicen,
Aberrois, Damascene, and Constantin,
Bernard, Galisden, and Gilbertin
Of his diet measurable was he,
For it was of no superfluitie;
But of great nourishing and digestible.
His study was but little on the Bible.
In sanguine and in percepolad withall
Lined with taffata and with sendall;
And yet he was but easy of dispence.
He kept that he won in time of pestilence;
For gold in phisike is a cordial,
Therefore he loved gold speciall.

It appears from this quaint and satirical picture, that, in our Chaucer’s days, astrology formed part of a physician’s study. It also plainly proves that a disgraceful collusion prevailed between medical practitioners and their apothecaries, mutually to enrich each other at the expense of the patient’s purse and constitution. The poet, moreover, seems to tax the faculty with irreligion: that unjust accusation was not uncommon; hence the old adage, “Ubi tres medici, duo athei.” To the disgrace of many illiberal persons of the present age, we have known some of our most able and praiseworthy physiologists charged with materialism.