The Visions of Dom Francisco de Quevedo Villegas

by Francisco de Quevedo

“Put the case,” says he, “that a voice from heaven should speak to any of us after this manner; what dost thou ail, O mortal man, or to what purpose is it, to spend thy life in groans, and complaints under the apprehension of death? where are thy past tears and pleasures? Are they not vanished and lost in the flux of time, as if thou hadst put water into a sieve? Bethink thyself then of a retreat, and leave the world with the same content, and satisfaction, as thou wouldst do a plentiful table, and a jolly company upon a full stomach. Poor fool that thou art! thus to macerate and torment thyself, when thou may’st enjoy thy heart at ease, and possess thy soul with repose and comfort, etc.”

This passage brought into my mind the words of Job, cap. 14, and I was carried on from one meditation to another, till at length, I fell fast asleep over my book, which I ascribed rather to a favourable providence, than to my natural disposition. So soon as my soul felt herself at liberty, she gave me the entertainment of this following comedy, my fancy supplying both the stage and the company.

In the first scene, entered a troop of physicians, upon their mules, with deep foot-cloths, marching in no very good order, sometime fast, sometime slow, and to say the truth, most commonly in a huddle. They were all wrinkled and withered about the eyes; I suppose with casting so many sour looks upon the piss-pots and close-stools of their patients, bearded like goats; and their faces so over-grown with hair, that their fingers could hardly find the way to their mouths. In the left hand they held their reins, and their gloves rolled up together; and in the right, a staff à la mode, which they carried rather for countenance, than correction; (for they understood no other menage than the heel) and all along, head and body went too, like a baker upon his panniers. Divers of them, I observed, had huge gold rings upon their fingers, and set with stones of so large a size, that they could hardly feel a patient’s pulse, without minding him of his monument. There were more than a good many of them, and a world of puny practisers at their heels, that came out graduates, by conversing rather with the mules than the doctors: well! said I to myself, if there goes no more than this to the making a physician, it is no marvel we pay so dear for their experience.

After these, followed a long train of mountebank-apothecaries, laden with pestles, and mortars, suppositories, spatulas, glister-pipes and syringes, ready charged, and as mortal as gun-shot, and several titled boxes with remedies without, and poisons within: ye may observe that when a patient comes to die, the apothecary’s mortar rings the passing-bell, as the priest’s requiem finishes the business. An apothecary’s shop is (in effect) no other than the physician’s armoury, that supplies him with weapons; and (to say the truth) the instruments of the apothecary and the soldier are much of a quality: what are their boxes but petards? their syringes, pistols; and their pills, but bullets? And after all, considering their purgative medicines, we may properly enough call their shops purgatory; and why not their persons hell? their patients the damned? and their masters the devils? These apothecaries were in jackets, wrought all over with Rs, struck through like wounded hearts, and in the form of the first character of their prescriptions, which (as they tell us) signifies recipe (take thou) but we find it to stand for recipio (I take.) Next to this figure, they write ana, ana, which is as much as to say an ass, an ass; and after this, march the ounces and the scruples; an incomparable cordial to a dying man; the former to dispatch the body, and the latter, to put the soul into the highway to the devil. To hear them call over their simples, would make you swear they were raising so many devils. There’s your opopanax, buphthalmus, astaphylinos, alectorolophos, ophioscorodon, anemosphorus, etc.

And by all this formidable bombast, is meant nothing in the world but a few paltry roots, as carrots, turnips, skirrets, radish and the like. But they have the old proverb at their fingers’ end: “he that knows thee will never buy thee;” and therefore everything must be made a mystery, to hold their patients in ignorance, and keep up the price of the market. And were not the very names of their medicines sufficient to fright away any distemper, ’tis to be feared the remedy would prove worse than the disease. Can any pain in nature, think ye, have the confidence to look a physician in the face, that comes armed with a drug made of man’s grease? though disguised under the name of mummy, to take off the horror and disgust of it: or to stay for a dressing with Dr. Whachum’s plaster, that shall fetch up a man’s leg to the size of a mill-post? When I saw these people herded with the physicians, methought the old sluttish proverb, that says, “there is a great distance between the pulse and the arse,” was much to blame for making such a difference in their dignities, for I find none at all; but the physician skips in a trice from the pulse to the stool and urinal, according to the doctrine of Galen, who sends all his disciples to those unsavoury oracles, from whose hands the devil himself, if he were sick, would not receive so much as a glister. Oh! these cursed and lawless arbitrators and disposers of our lives! that without either conscience or religion, divide our souls and bodies, by their damned poisonous potions, scarifications, incisions, excessive bleedings, etc., which are but the several ways of executing their tyranny and injustice upon us.

In the tail of these, came the surgeons, laden with pincers, cranes-bills, catheters, desquamatories, dilaters, scissors, saws; and with them so horrid an outcry, of cut, tear, open, saw, flay, burn, that my bones were ready to creep one into another for fear of an operation.

The next that came in, I should have taken by their mien, for devils disguised, if I had not spied their chains of rotten teeth, which put me in some hope they might be tooth-drawers, and so they proved; which is yet one of the lewdest trades in the world; for they are good for nothing but to depopulate our mouths, and make us old before our time. Let a man but yawn, and ye shall have one of these rogues examining his grinders, and there’s not a sound tooth in your head, but he had rather see’t at his girdle, than in the place of its nativity: nay, rather than fail, he’ll pick a quarrel with your gums. But that which puts me out of all patience, is to see these scoundrels ask twice as much for drawing an old tooth as would have bought ye a new one.

“Certainly,” said I to myself, “we are now past the worst, unless the devil himself come next.” And in that instant I heard the brushing of guitars, and the rattling of citterns, raking over certain passacailles and sarabands. These are a kennel of barbers thought I, or I’ll be hanged; and any man that had ever seen a barber’s shop might have told you as much without a conjurer, both by the music and by the very instruments, which are as proper a part of a barber’s furniture as his comb-cases and wash-balls. It was to me a pleasant entertainment, to see them lathering of asses’ heads, of all sorts and sizes, and their customers all the while winking and sputtering over their basins.

Presently after these, appeared a consort of loud and tedious talkers, that tired and deafened the company with their shrill, and restless gaggle; but as one told me, these were of several sorts. Some they called swimmers from the motion of their arms in all their discourses, which was just as if they had been paddling. Others they called apes (and we mimics); these were perpetually making of mops, and mows, and a thousand antic ridiculous gestures, in derision and imitation of others. In the third place, were make-bates, and sowers of dissension, and these were still rolling their eyes (like a Bartlemey puppet, without so much as moving the head) and leering over their shoulders, to surprise people at unawares in their familiarities, and privacies, and gather matter for calumny and detraction. The liars followed next; and these seemed to be a jolly contented sort of people, well fed, and well clothed; and having nothing else to trust to, methought it was a strange trade to live upon. I need not tell you, that they are never without a full audience, since all fools and impertinents are of their congregation.

After these, came a company of meddlers, a pragmatical insolent generation of men that will have an oar in every boat, and are indeed the bane of honest conversation, and the troublers of all companies and affairs, the most prostitute of all flatterers, and only devoted to their own profit. I thought this had been the last scene, because no more came upon the stage for a good while; and indeed I wondered that they came so late themselves, but one of the babblers told me (unasked) that this kind of serpent carrying his venom in his tail; it seemed reasonable, that being the most poisonous of the whole gang, they should bring up the rear.