Abdicatus

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