BER. Let me ask you, brother, above all things not to excite yourself
during our conversation.
ARG. I agree.
BER. To answer without anger to anything I may mention.
ARG. Very well.
BER. And to reason together upon the business I want to discuss with
you without any irritation.
ARG. Dear me! Yes. What a preamble!
BER. How is it, brother, that, with all the wealth you possess, and
with only one daughter—for I do not count the little one—you speak
of sending her to a convent?
ARG. How is it, brother, that I am master of my family, and that I can
do all I think fit?
BER. Your wife doesn’t fail to advise you to get rid, in that way, of
your two daughters; and I have no doubt that, through a spirit of
charity, she would be charmed to see them both good nuns.
ARG. Oh, I see! My poor wife again! It is she who does all the harm,
and everybody is against her.
BER. No, brother; let us leave that alone. She is a woman with the
best intentions in the world for the good of your family, and is free
from all interested motives. She expresses for you the most
extraordinary tenderness, and shows towards your children an
inconceivable goodness. No, don’t let us speak of her, but only of
your daughter. What can be your reason for wishing to give her in
marriage to the sort of a doctor?
ARG. My reason is that I wish to have a son-in-law who will suit my
wants.
BER. But it is not what your daughter requires, and we have a more
suitable match for her.
ARG. Yes; but this one is more suitable for me.
BER. But does she marry a husband for herself or for you, brother?
ARG. He must do both for her and for me, brother; and I wish to take
into my family people of whom I have need.
BER. So that, if your little girl were old enough, you would give her
to an apothecary?
ARG. Why not?
BER. Is it possible that you should always be so infatuated with your
apothecaries and doctors, and be so determined to be ill, in spite of
men and nature?
ARG. What do you mean by that, brother?
BER. I mean, brother, that I know of no man less sick than you, and
that I should be quite satisfied with a constitution no worse than
yours. One great proof that you are well, and that you have a body
perfectly well made, is that with all the pains you have taken, you
have failed as yet in injuring the soundness of your constitution, and
that you have not died of all the medicine they have made you swallow.
ARG. But are you aware, brother, that it is these medicines which keep
me in good health? Mr. Purgon says that I should go off if he were but
three days without taking care of me.
BER. If you are not careful, he will take such care of you that he
will soon send you into the next world.
ARG. But let us reason together, brother; don’t you believe at all in
medicine?
BER. No, brother; and I do not see that it is necessary for our
salvation to believe in it.
ARG. What! Do you not hold true a thing acknowledged by everybody, and
revered throughout all ages?
BER. Between ourselves, far from thinking it true, I look upon it as
one of the greatest follies which exist among men; and to consider
things from a philosophical point of view, I don’t know of a more
absurd piece of mummery, of anything more ridiculous, than a man who
takes upon himself to cure another man.
ARG. Why will you not believe that a man can cure another?
BER. For the simple reason, brother, that the springs of our machines
are mysteries about which men are as yet completely in the dark, and
nature has put too thick a veil before our eyes for us to know
anything about it.
ARG. Then, according to you, the doctors know nothing at all.
BER. Oh yes, brother. Most of them have some knowledge of the best
classics, can talk fine Latin, can give a Greek name to every disease,
can define and distinguish them; but as to curing these diseases,
that’s out of the question.
ARG. Still, you must agree to this, that doctors know more than
others.
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.
BER. Alas! brother; these are pure fancies, with which we deceive
ourselves. At all times, there have crept among men brilliant fancies
in which we believe, because they flatter us, and because it would be
well if they were true. When a doctor speaks to us of assisting,
succouring nature, of removing what is injurious to it, of giving it
what it is defective in, of restoring it, and giving back to it the
full exercise of its functions, when he speaks of purifying the blood,
of refreshing the bowels and the brain, of correcting the spleen, of
rebuilding the lungs, of renovating the liver, of fortifying the
heart, of re-establishing and keeping up the natural heat, and of
possessing secrets wherewith to lengthen life of many years—he
repeats to you the romance of physic. But when you test the truth of
what he has promised to you, you find that it all ends in nothing; it
is like those beautiful dreams which only leave you in the morning the
regret of having believed in them.
ARG. Which means that all the knowledge of the world is contained in
your brain, and that you think you know more than all the great
doctors of our age put together.
BER. When you weigh words and actions, your great doctors are two
different kinds of people. Listen to their talk, they are the
cleverest people in the world; see them at work, and they are the most
ignorant.
ARG. Heyday! You are a great doctor, I see, and I wish that some one
of those gentlemen were here to take up your arguments and to check
your babble.
BER. I do not take upon myself, brother, to fight against physic; and
every one at their own risk and peril may believe what he likes. What
I say is only between ourselves; and I should have liked, in order to
deliver you from the error into which you have fallen, and in order to
amuse you, to take you to see some of Molière’s comedies on this
subject.
ARG. Your Molière is a fine impertinent fellow with his comedies! I
think it mightily pleasant of him to go and take off honest people
like the doctors.
BER. It is not the doctors themselves that he takes off, but the
absurdity of medicine.
ARG. It becomes him well, truly, to control the faculty! He’s a nice
simpleton, and a nice impertinent fellow to laugh at consultations and
prescriptions, to attack the body of physicians, and to bring on his
stage such venerable people as those gentlemen.
BER. What would you have him bring there but the different professions
of men? Princes and kings are brought there every day, and they are of
as good a stock as your physicians.
ARG. No, by all the devils! if I were a physician, I would be revenged
of his impertinence, and when he falls ill, I would let him die
without relief. In vain would he beg and pray. I would not prescribe
for him the least little bleeding, the least little injection, and I
would tell him, “Die, die, like a dog; it will teach you to laugh at
us doctors.”
BER. You are terribly angry with him.
ARG. Yes, he is an ill-advised fellow, and if the doctors are wise,
they will do what I say.
BER. He will be wiser than the doctors, for he will not go and ask
their help.
ARG. So much the worse for him, if he has not recourse to their
remedies.
BER. He has his reasons for not wishing to have anything to do with
them; he is certain that only strong and robust constitutions can bear
their remedies in addition to the illness, and he has only just enough
strength for his sickness.
ARG. What absurd reasons. Here, brother, don’t speak to me anymore
about that man; for it makes me savage, and you will give me his
complaint.
BER. I will willingly cease, brother; and, to change the subject,
allow me to tell you that, because your daughter shows a slight
repugnance to the match you propose, it is no reason why you should
shut her up in a convent. In your choice of a son-in-law you should
not blindly follow the anger which masters you. We should in such a
matter yield a little to the inclinations of a daughter, since it is
for all her life, and the whole happiness of her married life depends
on it.