The Anatomy of Melancholy

MEMBER 4. SUBSECTION 1. Physician, patient, medicine.

Of the various gifts that our apostle Paul says God has bestowed on human beings, medicine is far from the least: it is most necessary and particularly beneficial to humanity.

After God, therefore, in all our desperate circumstances—for “healing comes from the Most High,” Ecclesiasticus 38:2—we must turn to and rely on the physician, who is “the hand of God,” says Hierophilus. God has given him knowledge so that God may be glorified in his wonderful works. “With such things he heals people and takes away their pain,” Ecclesiasticus 38:6–7. When you need the physician, do not let him leave you. “The time may come when their efforts succeed,” verse 13.

There can therefore be no doubt that, if we seek a physician as we should, we may find relief from our illnesses. I mean one who is competent and deserves the name. There are mountebanks, quacks and untrained practitioners in almost every street and every village who assume this title. These base and uneducated tradesmen cause this noble and useful art to be slandered and despised. But I am speaking of a physician who is reputable, learned, skilful and honest, whose duties are discussed at length by Wecker in his Antidotary, chapter 2, and Medical Compendium; Crato; Julius Alexandrinus in his medical work; Heurnius in Medical Practice, book 3, chapter 1; and others.

For this particular disease, Paracelsus insists that anyone who undertakes to cure it must be a magician, a chemist, a philosopher and an astrologer. Thurnesserus, Severinus the Dane and some others among his followers demand as much: many of these patients, they say, can be cured only by magic.

Paracelsus is so adamant in favour of chemical medicines that he admits almost no other treatment into his cures, while ridiculing Hippocrates, Galen and all their followers. But I have already condemned magic and all such remedies, and will discuss chemistry elsewhere.

Many famous physicians—Ficino, Crato and Fernel—consider astrology necessary; others doubt it and reject it. I will not presume to decide the controversy myself: Johannes Hossurtus, Thomas Boderius, and Magini in the preface to his Mathematical Medicine, shall decide for me. “Many physicians,” he says, “reject astrology in medicine, saying that it is of no use: they attack this one art as reckless, as it were, and seek glory for themselves from their ignorance of it. But I will refute physicians through physicians who defend and practise it—Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna and others, who consider them butchers without it: ‘physicians ignorant of astrology are killers,’ and so on.”

Paracelsus goes further: he insists that his physician must be predestined to cure this particular person and this particular illness; that each birth chart must be examined; and that the time of treatment, the gathering of herbs and their administration must be governed by astrology. In this, Thurnesserus and some practitioners of astrological medicine are too superstitious, in my judgement. “Hellebore will help, but not always, and not when given by just any physician,” and so on. But I think these men are too dogmatic and too pleased with their own opinions.