If Montaigne made great use of mineral waters, he had in revenge a formidable dread of physicians and their medicines, a sentiment he inherited from his father, “who died,” says he, “at the age of seventy-four years,” and his “grandfather and great-grandfather died at eighty years without tasting a drop of physic.”
Montaigne has justly criticized medicine in several essays on the healing art. He knew well the intividia medicorum, and it was for this reason that he remarked that a physician should always treat a case without a consultant. “There never was a doctor,” says Montaigne, “who, on accepting the services of a consultant, did not discontinue or readjust something.” Is not the same criticism deserved at the present day? How absurd are our medical consultations. The examples Montaigne gives of disagreements of doctors in consultation as to doctrines are equally applicable to modern times. The differences of Herophilus, Erasistratus, and the Æsclepiadæ as to the original causation of disease were no greater than those of the schools of Broussais and Pasteur, which have both acquired a universal celebrity in less than half a century.
Montaigne insisted that medicine owed its existence only to mankind’s fear of death and pain, an impatience at poor health and a furious and indiscreet thirst for a speedy cure, but the author of the “Essays” adds in concluding: “I honor physicians, not following the feeling of necessity, but for the love of themselves, having seen many honest doctors who were honorable and well worthy of being loved.”
The reputation for disagreement among doctors so much insisted on by Montaigne has served as a well-worn text for many other critics.
In Les Serres of Guillaume Bouchet, a contemporary of the author, we find the same shaft of sarcasm directed at physicians. Where will you find men in any other profession save that of medicine who envy and hate each other so heartily? What other profession on earth is given over to such bitter disagreements? How can common people be expected to honor and respect experts and savants so-called when the professors call each other ignoramusses and asses? Call these doctors into a case and one after the other they will disagree as to the diagnosis as well as to the method of cure. As Pellisson wrote:
“When an enemy you wish to kill
Don’t call assasins full of vice,
But call two doctors of great skill
To give contrary advice.”
Or in the verses of the original: