His practice is some business at bedsides, and his speculation an
urinal: he is distinguished from an empiric, by a round velvet cap and
doctor's gown, yet no man takes degrees more superfluously, for he is
doctor howsoever. He is sworn to Galen and Hippocrates, as university
men to their statutes, though they never saw them; and his discourse is
all aphorisms, though his reading be only Alexis of Piedmont,[11] or the
Regiment of Health.[12] The best cure he has done is upon his own purse,
which from a lean sickliness he hath made lusty, and in flesh. His
learning consists much in reckoning up the hard names of diseases, and
the superscriptions of gallipots in his apothecary's shop, which are
ranked in his shelves and the doctor's memory. He is, indeed, only
languaged in diseases, and speaks Greek many times when he knows not. If
he have been but a bystander at some desperate recovery, he is slandered
with it though he be guiltless; and this breeds his reputation, and that
his practice, for his skill is merely opinion. Of all odours he likes
best the smell of urine, and holds Vespasian's[13] rule, that no gain is
unsavory. If you send this once to him you must resolve to be sick
howsoever, for he will never leave examining your water, till he has
shaked it into disease:[l4] then follows a writ to his drugger in a
strange tongue, which he understands, though he cannot construe. If he
see you himself, his presence is the worst visitation: for if he cannot
heal your sickness, he will be sure to help it. He translates his
apothecary's shop into your chamber, and the very windows and benches
must take physic. He tells you your malady in Greek, though it be but a
cold, or head-ache; which by good endeavour and diligence he may bring
to some moment indeed. His most unfaithful act is, that he leaves a man
gasping, and his pretence is, death and he have a quarrel and must not
meet; but his fear is, lest the carcase should bleed.[15] Anatomies, and
other spectacles of mortality, have hardened him, and he is no more
struck with a funeral than a grave-maker. Noblemen use him for a
director of their stomach, and the ladies for wantonness,[16] especially
if he be a proper man. If he be single, he is in league with his
she-apothecary; and because it is the physician, the husband is patient.
If he have leisure to be idle (that is to study), he has a smatch at
alchemy, and is sick of the philosopher's stone; a disease uncurable,
but by an abundant phlebotomy of the purse. His two main opposites are a
mountebank and a good woman, and he never shews his learning so much as
in an invective against them and their boxes. In conclusion, he is a
sucking consumption, and a very brother to the worms, for they are both
ingendered out of man's corruption.