CHAPTER CXXI.
WHEREIN IT APPEARS THAT SANCHO'S PHYSICIAN AT BARATARIA ACTED ACCORDING TO PRECEDENTS AND PRESCRIBED LAWS.
Lettor, tu vedi ben com' io innalzo
La mia materia, e però con piu arte
Non ti maravigliar s' i' la rincalzo.
DANTE.
But the practice both of medicine and of surgery, whatever might be the religion of the practitioner, was obnoxious to suspicions for which the manners of antiquity, of the dark ages and of every corrupted society gave but too much cause. It was a power that could be exercised for evil as well as for good.
One of the most detestable acts recorded in ancient history is that of the Syrian usurper Tryphon, who when he thought it expedient to make away with young Antiochus the heir to the kingdom, delivered him into a surgeon's hands to be cut for the stone, that he might in that manner be put to death. It is a disgraceful fact that the most ancient operation known to have been used in surgery, is that abominable one which to the reproach of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities is still practised in Italy.
Physicians were not supposed to be more scrupulous than surgeons. The most famous and learned Doctor Christopher Wirtzung, whose General Practice of Physic was translated from German into English at the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's reign by his countryman Jacob Mosan, Doctor in the same faculty, has this remarkable section in his work:
“Ancient Physicians were wont to have an old proverb, and to say that Venom is so proud that it dwelleth commonly in gold and silver; whereby they meant that great personages that eat and drink out of gold and silver, are in greater danger to be poisoned than the common people that do eat and drink out of earthen dishes.” Christopher Wirtzung might have quoted Juvenal here;
Nulla aconita bibuntur
Fictilibus. Tunc illa time, cum pocula sumes
Gemmata, et lato Setinum ardebit in auro.