Ber. They know, brother, what I have told you; and that does not effect many cures. All the excellency of their art consists in pompous gibberish, in a specious babbling, which gives you words instead of reasons, and promises instead of results.
Arg. Still, brother, there exist men as wise and clever as you, and we see that in cases of illness every one has recourse to the doctor.
Ber. It is a proof of human weakness, and not of the truth of their art.
Arg. Still, doctors must believe in their art, since they make use of it for themselves.
Ber. It is because some of them share the popular error by which they themselves profit, while others profit by it without sharing it. Your Mr. Purgon has no wish to deceive; he is a thorough doctor from head to foot, a man who believes in his rules more than in all the demonstrations of mathematics, and who would think it a crime to question them. He sees nothing obscure in physic, nothing doubtful, nothing difficult, and through an impetuous prepossession, an obstinate confidence, a coarse common sense and reason, orders right and left purgatives and bleedings, and hesitates at nothing. We must bear him no ill-will for the harm he does us; it is with the best intentions in the world that he will send you into the next world, and in killing you he will do no more than he has done to his wife and children, and than he would do to himself, if need be. [4]
Arg. It is because you have a spite against him. But let us come to the point. What is to be done when one is ill?
Ber. Nothing, brother.
Arg. Nothing?
Ber. Nothing. Only rest. Nature, when we leave her free, will herself gently recover from the disorder into which she has fallen. It is our anxiety, our impatience, which does the mischief, and most men die of their remedies, and not of their diseases.
Arg. Still you must acknowledge, brother, that we can in certain things help nature.