PHYSIC. PHYSICIANS. MAXIMS RELATING TO HEALTH.
If the doctor cures, the sun sees it; if he kills, the earth hides it.
"The earth covers the mistakes of the physician" (Italian, Spanish).[754] "Bleed him and purge him; if he dies, bury him" (Spanish).[755] It is a melancholy truth that "The doctor is often more to be feared than the disease" (French).[756] "Throw physic to the dogs" is in effect the advice given by many eminent physicians, and by some of the greatest thinkers the world has seen. "Shun doctors and doctors' drugs if you wish to be well,"[757] was the seventh, last, and best rule of health laid down by the famous physician Hoffmann. Sir William Hamilton declared that "Medicine in the hands in which it is vulgarly dispensed is a curse to humanity rather than a blessing;" and Sir Astley Cooper did not scruple to avow that "The science of medicine was founded on conjecture and improved by murder." It is a remarkable fact that "The doctor seldom takes physic" (Italian).[758] He does not appear to have a very lively faith in his own art. As for his alleged cures, their reality does not pass unquestioned. It is true that "Dear physic always does good, if not to the patient, at least to the apothecary" (German);[759] but "It is God that cures, and the doctor gets the money" (Spanish).[760] Save your money, then, and "If you have a friend who is a doctor take off your hat to him, and send him to the house of your enemy" (Spanish).[761]
The best physicians are Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet, and Dr. Merriman.
Every man at forty is either a fool or a physician.
A creaking gate hangs long on its hinges.
Valetudinarians often outlive persons of robust constitution who take less care of themselves. A French saying to this purpose, which is too idiomatic to be translated, was neatly applied by Pozzo di Borgo in a conversation with Lady Holland. Her ladyship, exulting in the duration of the Whig government, notwithstanding the prevalent anticipations of their fall, said to him, "Vous voyez, Monsieur l'Ambassadeur, que nous vivons toujours." "Oui, madame," he replied, "les petites santés durent quelquefois longtemps." "Creaking carts last longest" (Dutch).[762] "The flawed pots are the most lasting" (French).[763]
A groaning wife and a grunting horse ne'er failed their master.
Seek your salve where ye got your sore.—Scotch.
Take a hair of the dog that bit you.
Advice given to persons suffering the after-pains of a carouse. The same stimulant which caused their nervous depression will also relieve it. The metaphor is derived from an old medical practice to which Seneca makes some allusion, and which is commended in a rhyming French adage to this effect, "With the hair of the beast that bit thee, or with its blood, thou wilt be cured."[764] Cervantes, in his tale of La Gitanilla, thus describes an old gipsy woman's manner of treating a person bitten by a dog:—"She took some of the dog's hairs, fried them in oil, and after washing with wine the two bites she found on the patients left leg, she put the hairs and the oil upon them, and over this dressing a little chewed green rosemary. She then bound the leg up carefully with clean bandages, made the sign of the cross over it, and said, 'Now go to sleep, friend, and with the help of God your hurts will not signify.'"
This is the doctrine of homœopathy. "Poison quells poison" (Italian).[765]
"Tut, man! one fire burns out another's burning,
One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish.
Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning:
One desperate grief cures with another's languish.
Take thou some new infection to thine eye,
And the rank poison of the old will die."—Romeo and Juliet.
If the wind strike thee through a hole,
Go make thy will and mend thy soul.
"A blast from a window is a shot from a crossbow" (Italian).[766] "To a bull and a draught of air give way" (Spanish).[767]
One hour's sleep before midnight is worth two hours after it.
Ladies rightly call sleep before midnight "beauty sleep."
Old young, and old long.[768]
You must leave off the irregularities of youth be-times if you wish to enjoy a long and hale old age; for
Young men's knocks old men feel.
"The sins of our youth we atone for in our old age" (Latin).[769]
Rub your sore eye with your elbow.
He who laid down this rule of sound surgery was a man qui ne se mouchait pas du talon; he did not blow his nose with his heel. If a speck of dust enters your eye, close the lid gently, keep your fingers away from it, and leave the foreign body to be washed by the tears to the inner corner of the eye, whence it may be removed without difficulty.