"Here's fourteen pills for thirteen pence,
Enough in any man's own con-sci-ence."
But the true physician always left his reward to be measured by the gratitude and justice of the benefited. He extorted nothing, but freely received that which was freely given. Dr. Doran, with his characteristic erudition, says, "Now there is a religious reason why fees are supposed not to be taken by physicians. Amongst the Christian martyrs are reckoned the two eastern brothers, Damian and Cosmas. They practised as physicians in Cilicia, and they were the first mortal practitioners who refused to take recompense for their work. Hence they were called Anargyri, or 'without money.' All physicians are pleasantly supposed to follow this example. They never take fees, like Damian and Cosmas; but they meekly receive what they know will be given out of Christian humility, and with a certain or uncertain reluctance, which is the nearest approach that can be made in these times to the two brothers who were in partnership at Egea in Cilicia."
But, with all due respect to our learned writer, there is a much better reason for the phenomenon. Self-interest, and not a Christian ambition to resemble the charitable Cilician brothers, was the cause of physicians preferring a system of gratuities to a system of legal rights. They could scarcely have put in a claim without defining the amount claimed; and they soon discovered that a rich patient, left to his generosity, folly, and impotent anxiety to propitiate the mysterious functionary who presided over his life, would, in a great majority of cases, give ten, or even a hundred times as much as they in the wildest audacity of avarice would ever dare to ask for.
Seleucus, for having his son Antiochus restored to health, was fool enough to give sixty thousand crowns to Erasistratus: and for their attendance on the Emperor Augustus, and his two next successors, no less than four physicians received annual pensions of two hundred and fifty thousand sesterces apiece. Indeed, there is no saying what a sick man will not give his doctor. The "cacoethes donandi" is a manifestation of enfeebled powers which a high-minded physician is often called upon to resist, and an unprincipled one often basely turns to his advantage. Alluding to this feature of the sick, a deservedly successful and honourable practitioner, using the language of one of our Oriental pro-consuls, said with a laugh to the writer of these pages, "I wonder at my moderation."
But directly health approaches, this desirable frame of mind disappears. When the devil was sick he was a very different character from what he was on getting well. 'Tis so with ordinary patients, not less than satanic ones. The man who, when he is in his agonies, gives his medical attendant double fees three times a day (and vows, please God he recover, to make his fortune by trumpeting his praises to the world), on becoming convalescent, grows irritable, suspicious, and distant,—and by the time he can resume his customary occupations, looks on his dear benefactor and saviour as a designing rascal, bent on plundering him of his worldly possessions. Euricus Cordus, who died in 1535, seems to have taken the worst possible time for getting his payment; but it cannot be regretted that he did so, as his experiences inspired him to write the following excellent epigram:—
"Tres medicus facies habet; unam quando rogatur,
Angelicam; mox est, cum juvat, ipse Deus.
Post ubi curato, poscit sua prœmia, morbo,
Horridus apparet, terribilisque Sathan."
"Three faces wears the doctor: when first sought,
An angel's—and a God's the cure half wrought:
But when, that cure complete, he seeks his fee,
The Devil looks then less terrible than he."
Illustrative of the same truth is a story told of Bouvart. On entering one morning the chamber of a French Marquis, whom he had attended through a very dangerous illness, he was accosted by his noble patient in the following terms:—
"Good day to you, Mr. Bouvart; I feel quite in spirits, and think my fever has left me."
"I am sure it has," replied Bouvart, dryly. "The very first expression you used convinced me of it."