There is more fear, therefore more cause. If the physician desire help,
the burden grows great: there is a growth of the disease then; but there
must be an autumn too; but whether an autumn of the disease or me, it is
not my part to choose; but if it be of me, it is of both; my disease
cannot survive me, I may overlive it. Howsoever, his desiring of others
argues his candour, and his ingenuity; if the danger be great, he
justifies his proceedings, and he disguises nothing that calls in
witnesses; and if the danger be not great, he is not ambitious, that is
so ready to divide the thanks and the honour of that work which he begun
alone, with others. It diminishes not the dignity of a monarch that he
derive part of his care upon others; God hath not made many suns, but he
hath made many bodies that receive and give light. The Romans began with
one king; they came to two consuls; they returned in extremities to one
dictator: whether in one or many, the sovereignty is the same in all
states and the danger is not the more, and the providence is the more,
where there are more physicians; as the state is the happier where
businesses are carried by more counsels than can be in one breast, how
large soever. Diseases themselves hold consultations, and conspire how
they may multiply, and join with one another, and exalt one another's
force so; and shall we not call physicians to consultations? Death is in
an old man's door, he appears and tells him so, and death is at a young
man's back, and says nothing; age is a sickness, and youth is an
ambush; and we need so many physicians as may make up a watch, and spy
every inconvenience. There is scarce any thing that hath not killed
somebody; a hair, a feather hath done it; nay, that which is our best
antidote against it hath done it; the best cordial hath been deadly
poison. Men have died of joy, and almost forbidden their friends to weep
for them, when they have seen them die laughing. Even that tyrant,
Dionysius (I think the same that suffered so much after), who could not
die of that sorrow, of that high fall, from a king to a wretched private
man, died of so poor a joy as to be declared by the people at a theatre
that he was a good poet. We say often that a man may live of a little;
but, alas, of how much less may a man die? And therefore the more
assistants the better. Who comes to a day of hearing, in a cause of any
importance, with one advocate? In our funerals we ourselves have no
interest; there we cannot advise, we cannot direct; and though some
nations (the Egyptians in particular) built themselves better tombs than
houses because they were to dwell longer in them, yet amongst ourselves,
the greatest man of style whom we have had, the Conqueror, was left, as
soon as his soul left him, not only without persons to assist at his
grave but without a grave. Who will keep us then we know not; as long as
we can, let us admit as much help as we can; another and another
physician is not another and another indication and symptom of death,
but another and another assistant, and proctor of life: nor do they so
much feed the imagination with apprehension of danger, as the
understanding with comfort. Let not one bring learning, another
diligence, another religion, but every one bring all; and as many
ingredients enter into a receipt, so may many men make the receipt. But
why do I exercise my meditation so long upon this, of having plentiful
help in time of need? Is not my meditation rather to be inclined another
way, to condole and commiserate their distress who have none? How many
are sicker (perchance) than I, and laid in their woful straw at home (if
that corner be a home), and have no more hope of help, though they die,
than of preferment, though they live! Nor do more expect to see a
physician then, than to be an officer after; of whom, the first that
takes knowledge, is the sexton that buries them, who buries them in
oblivion too! For they do but fill up the number of the dead in the
bill, but we shall never hear their names, till we read them in the book
of life with our own. How many are sicker (perchance) than I, and thrown
into hospitals, where (as a fish left upon the sand must stay the tide)
they must stay the physician's hour of visiting, and then can be but
visited! How many are sicker (perchance) than all we, and have not this
hospital to cover them, not this straw to lie in, to die in, but have
their gravestone under them, and breathe out their souls in the ears and
in the eyes of passengers, harder than their bed, the flint of the
street? that taste of no part of our physic, but a sparing diet, to whom
ordinary porridge would be julep enough, the refuse of our servants
bezoar enough, and the offscouring of our kitchen tables cordial enough.
O my soul, when thou art not enough awake to bless thy God enough for
his plentiful mercy in affording thee many helpers, remember how many
lack them, and help them to them or to those other things which they
lack as much as them.