POLORUS
Well, not a tank is missing. Every zinc-lined stomach and copper-plated kidney in Rome is here. By the way, have we got enough stomach-pumps?
PISO
[Indicating them] Here are six.
POLORUS
Maybe that will be enough. [He roots among the medicines] I have a feeling that this will finish the Christian wife. She'll never stand for an old-time banquet.
PISO
Then let us thank all the gods. If Christianity ever actually got on its legs, the doctoring business would go to pot. All this praying and fasting and going to bed at ten o'clock is fatal to pathology. The aim of medicine is to save a man from the just consequences of his own vices. If he gives up his vices, then—
POLORUS
But he never does. All he ever comes to is the exchange of one vice for another. This praying that you mention is a vice. Fasting is a vice. Going to bed at ten o'clock is a vice.