Abdicatus

Therefore let us now come to the ground of disownment and let us see what the nature of the charge is. It is necessary to recur once more to the intent of the lawgiver; for, suppose we grant you briefly the right to disown as often as you wish and also concede you this right even against your benefactor, you are not to disown casually, I take it, or for any and eve cause. The lawgiver does not say that the father may disown for any reason that he may chance to allege—that it is enough just to express the wish and find a fault. Else why should we need a court? No, he commits it to you, gentlemen of the jury, to consider whether the father’s anger is based upon just and sufficient grounds or not. This, then, is what you should now look into. And IJ shall begin with what immediately followed his insanity.

The first act of his sanity was to set aside the disownment, and I was a saviour, a benefactor, all in allto him. No charge, I take it, could go with that. And as to what followed, what do you censure in all of it? What service, what attention proper to a son did I omit? When did I sleep away from home? Of what ill-timed carouses, of what riotous revels do you accuse me? What licentiousness has there been? What pander have I assaulted? Who has filed any charges? Nobody at all. Yet these are the deeds for which the law especially sanctions disownment.

“No, but your stepmother began to be ill.” Well, do you accuse me of that, and demand satisfaction for the illness?

“No,” he says. What, then? “That when you are ordered to treat her, you do not consent; and on that account would merit disownment for disobeying your father.” Deferring for a moment the question what sort of orders on his part, when I cannot obey them, cause me to be considered disobedient, I first assert simply that the law does not allow him to issue all orders, and that I am not obliged to obey all orders under all circumstances. In the matter of commands, sometimes disobedience is unexceptionable, sometimes it justifies anger and punishment. If you yourself are ill, and I am indifferent; if you bid me manage the household, and I am neglectful; if you direct me to oversee the estate, and I am indiligent—all this and the like of it affords reasonable grounds for a father’s censure. But these other matters are within the discretion of us children, belonging as they do to our callings and the exercise of them; particularly if the father himself is in no way wronged. For

In the case of the medical profession, the more distinguished it is and the more serviceable to the world, the more unrestricted it should be for those who practise it. It is only just that the art of healing should carry with it some privilege in respect to the liberty of practising it; that no compulsion and no commands should be put upon a holy calling, taught by the gods and exercised by men of learning; that it should not be subject to enslavement by the law, or to voting and judicial punishment, or to fear and a father’s threats and a layman’s wrath. Consequently, if I were to say to you, as clearly and expressly as this: ‘I am unwilling to give treatment, and I do not do so, although Ican; my knowledge of the profession is for my benefit alone and my father’s, and to others I wish to be a layman,” what tyrant so high-handed that he would constrain me to practise my calling against my will? Such things should, in my opinion, be amenable to entreaties and supplications, not to laws and fits of anger and courts: the physician ought to be persuaded, not ordered; he ought to be willing, not fearful; he ought not to be haled to the bedside, but to take pleasure in coming of his own accord. Surely his calling is exempt from paternal compulsion in view of the fact that

This, then, is what I might say without circumlocution in behalf of my profession if you had had me taught and had been at much pains and expense that I might learn, and I were nevertheless reluctant to undertake this one cure, which was possible. But as things stand, consider how absolutely unreasonable a thing you are doing in not allowing me to use my own possession freely. I did not learn this profession while I was your son or subject to your jurisdiction, and yet I learned it for you (aye, you were the first to profit by it) though I had no help from you towards learning it. What teacher did you furnish money for? What supply of drugs? None at all. No, poor as I was, in want of necessities, and pitied by my teachers, I got myself educated, and the assistance towards learning which I had from my father was grief, loneliness, poverty, the hatred of my family, and the aversion of my kinsmen. In return for this, do you now think fit to utilize my profession and wish to be master of all that I acquired when you were not my master? Be content if I have already done you a good turn of my own accord, without previous indebtedness to you, for then as now nothing could have been required of meas an expressionof gratitude.

Surely my act of kindness should not become an obligation for the future, nor should the fact that I conferred a benefit of my own free will constitute a reason that I should be ordered to do it against my will; neither should it become customary that once a "man has cured anybody, he must for ever treat all those whom his former patient wishes him to treat. Under those conditions we should have elected our

That is what I might have said if what he enjoined upon me were possible, and I were refusing to obey him in absolutely everything, and under compulsion. But as things are, consider now what his commands are like. “Since you have cured me,” says he, “from insanity, since my wife too is insane and has the same symptoms” (for so he thinks), “and has been given up by others in the same way, and since you can do everything, as you have shown, cure her too and free her forthwith from the disorder.”” That, to hear it so simply put, might seem very reasonable, particularly to a layman, inexperienced in matters of medicine. But if you will listen to my plea on behalf of my profession, you will discover that all things are not possible to us, that the natures of ailments are not alike, that the cure is not the same or the same medicines effective in all cases; and then it will be clear that there is a great difference between not wishing to do a thing and not being able. Suffer me to indulge in scientific discourse about these matters, and do not consider my discussion of them tactless, beside the point, or alien and unseasonable.

In the first place, the natures and temperaments of human bodies are not the same, although they are

In addition to these important distinctions, it is easy to grasp the fact that the bodies of women differ very widely from those of men, both in respect to

It is not right, then, to ask of the physicians the same treatment for both, when we know that there is a great gulf between them, dissociated as they have been from the very first in their entire mode of life, and in all their activities and all their pursuits. So when you say “It is a case of insanity,” add, “insanity in a woman,” and do not confuse all these variations by subsuming them under the title of insanity, which seems always one and the same thing, but distinguish them, as is right, in their nature and see what can be done in each case. That is what we do, for, as I remember telling you in the beginning of my speech, the first thing that we consider is the constitution and temperament of the patient’s body, what quality predominates in it, whether it is inclined to be hot or cold, whether it is

To be sure, of madness itself there are countless varieties, with many causes and even dissimilar names; for perversity, eccentricity, delirium, and lunacy are not the same thing, but are all names that signify whether one is more or less in the grip of the disease. The causes, too, are of one sort with men, another with women, and even among men they are of one sort with the young and different with the aged; for instance, with the young usually excess of humours, whereas in the case of the old, groundless prejudice and insensate anger against members of the family, attacking them frequently, disturbs them at first, then gradually deranges them to the point of insanity. Women are affected by many things which easily incline them to this ailment, especially by excessive hatred of someone, or jealousy of an enemy who is prospering, or grief of some sort, or anger; these passions, slowly smouldering and acquiring strength in a long lapse of time, produce madness.

That, father, is what has happened to your wife, and it may be that something has grieved her recently, for she, of course, hated nothing at all. However that may be, she has a seizure, at all events, and in the circumstances cannot be cured by a physician. If anyone else should engage to do it, if anyone — should relieve her, you may then hate me as offending

As regards your wife, father, the case stands thus, and I tell you so after careful observation—she will never be better, even if she takes medicine a thousand times. For that reason it is not proper to make any attempt, unless you are trying to force me into sheer failure and wish to give me a bad name. Let me continue to be envied by my fellow-practitioners ! If, however, you disown me again, I certainly, though totally alone in the world, will not pray that any adversity may befall you; but what if (Heaven forfend !) your affliction returns once more? Somehow it often happens that such afflictions, under irritation, do recur. What shall I be required to do? I will treat you even then, you may be sure, and shall never desert the post which Nature has commanded sons to hold, nor ever, so far as in me lies, forget my origin. And then, if you recover your mind, may I expect you some day to take me back again? Look! even now by these actions of yours you are bringing on the disorder and provoking the