But consider what manner of man he will now be disowning. I do
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not mean that then I was but a layman, whereas now I am a physician, for my profession would avail me nothing in this respect. Nor that then I was young, whereas now I am well on in years and derive from my age the right to have it believed that I would do no wrong; for that too is perhaps trivial. But at that time, even if he had suffered no wrong, as I should maintain, yet he had received no benefit from me when he excluded me from the house ; whereas now I have recently been his saviour and benefactor. What could be more ungrateful than that, after he had been saved through me and had escaped so great a danger, he should at once make return in this way, taking no account of that cure; nay, should so easily forget and try to drive into loneliness a man who, when he might justly have exulted over those who had unjustly cast him out, not only had borne him no grudge but actually had saved his life and made him sound of mind?
It is no trifling or commonplace benefit, gentlemen of the jury, that I have conferred upon him; and yet I am accounted worthy of treatment like this. Although he himself does not know what happened then, you all know how he acted and felt and what his condition was when, taking him in hand after the other doctors had given up, while the members of the family were avoiding him and not venturing even to approach him, I made him what you see him, so that he is able to bring charges and argue about the laws. Stay! you can see your counterpart, father; you were nearly as your wife is now, when I brought you back to your former sanity. Truly it is not just that I should receive such a recompense for it, or that
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you should employ your reason only against me. That I have done you no little good is clear from the very charges which you bring; you hate me because I do not cure your wife when she is at the end of everything and in an utterly wretched plight. Since I freed you from a similar condition, why are you not far rather overjoyed and thankful to have been liberated from a state so terrible? Instead, and it is most ungrateful—you no sooner recover your sanity than you bring me to court and after your life has been saved, seek to punish me, reverting to that old-time hatred and citing the self-same law. It is a handsome fee, in truth, that you pay in this manner to the art of healing, and a fitting price for your medicines, to employ your sanity only to attack your physician !
Will you, gentlemen of the jury, empower this man to punish his benefactor, to banish his saviour, to hate the one who made him sane, to take vengeance on the one who set him on his feet? Not if you do what is just. For if I were really now guilty of the greatest offences, there was no slight gratitude owing me previously; keeping this in sight and in mind, he would have done well to ignore the present and to be prompt to forgive for the sake of the past, especially if the benefaction were so great as to overtop everything subsequent. That, I think, is true of mine toward this man, whom I saved, who is my debtor for the whole of his life, to whom I have given existence, sanity, and intelligence, and that at a time when all the others had finally given up and were confessing themselves defeated by the malady.
My benefaction, I think, is the greater because,
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although I was not his son at that time and had no imperative reason to take the case but was free and independent, having been released from the responsibility imposed by nature, nevertheless I was not indifferent but came voluntarily, unsummoned, on my own initiative; I gave my assistance, lavished my attentions, brought about a cure, and set my father on his feet, preserving him for myself, pleading my own cause against his disownment, stilling his anger by my friendliness, annulling the law by my love, purchasing by a great benefaction my reentrance into the family, demonstrating my loyalty to my father at a crisis so dangerous, bringing about my own adoption with the help of my profession, and proving myself a legitimate son in his time of dire need.
What do you suppose my sufferings were, what my exertions, to be with him, to wait upon him, to watch my opportunity, now yielding to the full force of the ailment, now bringing my professional skill to bear when the disorder abated a little? And truly, of all these duties that are included in medical science, the most dangerous is to treat such patients and to approach people in that condition, for often they loose their frenzy upon those who are near them, when their ailment has become severe. And yet none of these considerations made me hesitant or faint-hearted. I joined battle with the disease and measured myself against it in every way, and so at last prevailed by means of my remedy.
Let no one, hearing this, be quick to remark: “What sort of feat is it, and how great, to give a remedy?”’ Many things must precede this; one must prepare the way for the medicine, make the
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body easy to cure, and take thought for the patient’s whole condition, purging him, reducing him, nourishing him with the proper foods, rousing him as much as is expedient, planning for periods of sleep, contriving periods of solitude. Those who have any other sickness can readily be persuaded to consent to all this, but the insane because of their independence of spirit are hard to influence and hard to direct, dangerous to the physician, and hard to conquer by the treatment. Often when we think we are near the goal at last and become hopeful, some trivial slip, occurring when the illness has reached its height, easily overturns everything that has been done, hampers the treatment, and thwarts our skill.