Licence: In copyright
Credit: Moliere and the physician / by Max Kahn. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
10/20
![[347] great harm to the entire profession.’’ Guy Patin strongly believed in having his patients die “ according to rule rather than to recover in violation of it.” Moliere ridiculed all physicians and all medicine. He had no more respect for the “ outside doctor ”—him of Montpellier —than he had for the members of the Parisian faculty. He was especially venomous against the medical profession be- cause of their seeming ignorance and lack of skill. Suffering as he did from a painful disease he became morose and dis- gusted with the futility of prescriptions. Whether it was aneurysm of the aorta or pulmonary tuberculosis, as has been surmised by some, in any case, accompanied as it was by hypochondriasis, it was sufficient to especially interest him in the medical factions of his day. He ridiculed all of them impartially. Moliere’s dramas against medicine began in his ^‘bam storming ” days. “ The Pljdng Physician ” and “ The Physi- cian in Love ” are two plays of inferior quality written by the dramatist at the vexy beginning of his career. The lat- ter drama is lost. In Le Mededn Volant we find Moliere’s first attack on medicine. Sganarelle, the famous rogue, under- takes to impersonate a learned physician, in order to aid his master in his love affair. He assumes the doctor’s gown and talks with the pedantic air, which Moliere thought was char- acteristic of the physician; Hippocrates says, and Galen, by undoubted arguments, dem- onstrates that a person is not in good health when he is ill. You are wise to place all your hope in me; for I am the greatest, the noblest, the most learned physician in vegetable, sensitive and mineral faculty. Unlike other physicians he not only looks at the urine but also tastes it, but like them he is a stickler for formality. Upon being told his patient is dying, he exclaimed: Ah! let her be careful not to do so; she must not amuse herself by allowing herself to die without a prescription from the doctor. This last remark, the author was very fond of repeating, and we find it again in ‘ The Physician in Spite of Himself.’ ” In another of his farces “The Jealousy of Le Barbouille” written during his provincial career the doctor is still more](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2804051x_0012.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
