CE fagotage de tant de diuerses pieces, se faict en cette condition, que ie n’y mets la main, que lors qu’vne trop lasche oysiueté me presse, et non ailleurs que chez moy. Ainsin il s’est basty à diuerses poses et interualles, comme les occasions me detiennent ailleurs par fois plusieurs moys. Au demeurant, ie ne corrige point mes premieres imaginations par les secondes, ouy à l’auenture quelque mot: mais pour diuersifier, non pour oster. Ie veux representer le progrez de mes humeurs, et qu’on voye chasque piece en sa naissance. Ie prendrois plaisir d’auoir commencé plustost, et à recognoistre le train de mes mutations.
This bundle of so many different pieces is made on this condition: I set my hand to it only when too slack an idleness presses me, and nowhere but at home. So it has been built up in various stages and intervals, as occasions sometimes keep me elsewhere for several months. For the rest, I do not correct my first notions by my second ones—well, perhaps a word here and there, but to vary, not to remove. I want to show the progress of my moods, and to let each piece be seen as it was born. I would have liked to have begun sooner, so as to recognize the course of my changes.
Vn valet qui me seruoit à les escrire soubs moy, pensa faire vn grand butin de m’en desrober plusieurs pieces choisies à sa poste. Cela me console, qu’il n’y fera pas plus de gain, que i’y ay fait de perte.
A servant who used to write them down at my dictation thought he had made a fine haul by stealing several pieces from me, picked as he pleased. It consoles me that he will gain no more from it than I have lost.
The stone arrives
Montaigne describes his kidney stone and how he is learning to live with the pain.
Ie me suis enuieilly de sept ou huict ans depuis que ie commençay. Ce n’a pas esté sans quelque nouuel acquest. I’y ay pratiqué la colique, par la liberalité des ans: leur commerce et longue conuersation, ne se passe aysément sans quelque tel fruit. Ie voudroy bien, de plusieurs autres presens, qu’ils ont à faire, à ceux qui les hantent long temps, qu’ils en eussent choisi quelqu’vn qui m’eust esté plus acceptable: car ils ne m’en eussent sçeu faire, que i’eusse en plus grande horreur, des mon enfance. C’estoit à poinct nommé, de tous les accidens de la vieillesse, celuy que ie craignois le plus.
I have grown older by seven or eight years since I began. It has not been without some new acquisition. Through the liberality of the years I have made the acquaintance of the colic: their company and long familiarity seldom pass without some such fruit. Of the many other presents they have to give to those who keep company with them long, I could wish they had chosen one more acceptable to me; for they could not have given me any that I had held in greater horror since my childhood. Of all the accidents of old age, it was precisely the one I feared most.
I’auoy pensé mainte-fois à part moy, que i’alloy trop auant: et qu’à faire vn si long chemin, ie ne faudroy pas de m’engager en fin, en quelque malplaisant rencontre. Ie sentois et protestois assez, qu’il estoit heure de partir, et qu’il falloit trencher la vie dans le vif, et dans le sein, suyuant la regle des chirurgiens, quand ils ont à coupper quelque membre. Qu’à celuy, qui ne la rendoit à temps, Nature auoit accoustumé de faire payer de bien rudes vsures. Il s’en faloit tant, que i’en fusse prest lors, qu’en dix-huict mois ou enuiron qu’il y a que ie suis en ce malplaisant estat, i’ay desia appris à m’y accommoder.
I had often thought to myself that I was going too far, and that on so long a road I would not fail to run at last into some unpleasant encounter. I felt and declared often enough that it was time to leave, and that life should be cut off in the living and sound flesh, following the rule surgeons observe when they have to amputate a limb; and that from the man who did not give it back in time, Nature was accustomed to exact very harsh interest. So far was I from being ready then, that in the eighteen months or so that I have been in this unpleasant state, I have already learned to adapt myself to it.
I’entre desia en composition de ce viure coliqueux: i’y trouue dequoy me consoler, et dequoy esperer. Tant les hommes sont accoquinez à leur estre miserable, qu’il n’est si rude condition qu’ils n’acceptent pour s’y conseruer. Oyez Mæcenas. Debilem facito manu, / Debilem pede, coxa, / Lubricos quate dentes: / Vita dum superest, bene est. Et couuroit Tamburlan d’vne sotte humanité, la cruauté fantastique qu’il exerçoit contre les ladres, en faisant mettre à mort autant qu’il en venoit à sa coignoissance, pour, disoit-il, les deliurer de la vie qu’ils viuoient si penible. Car il n’y auoit nul d’eux, qui n’eust mieux aymé estre trois fois ladre, que de n’estre pas. Et Antisthenes le Stoïcien, estant fort malade, et s’escriant: Qui me deliurera de ces maux?
I am already coming to terms with this colicky life; I find in it something to console me and something to hope for. So firmly are men attached to their miserable existence that there is no condition so harsh that they will not accept it in order to stay alive. Listen to Maecenas: Make me maimed in the hand, / Lame in the foot and hip, / Shake my loosened teeth: / So long as life remains, all is well. And Tamburlaine cloaked in a foolish humanity the fantastic cruelty he practiced on lepers, having as many put to death as came to his knowledge, in order, he said, to deliver them from the painful life they were living. For there was not one of them who would not rather have been a leper three times over than not be at all. And Antisthenes the Stoic, being very ill, cried out: “Who will deliver me from these ills?”
Diogenes, qui l’estoit venu veoir, luy presentant vn couteau: Cestuy-cy, si tu veux, bien tost: Ie ne dy pas de la vie, repliqua il, ie dy des maux. Les souffrances qui me touchent simplement par l’ame, m’affligent beaucoup moins qu’elles ne font la pluspart des autres hommes: partie par iugement: car le monde estime plusieurs choses horribles, ou euitables au prix de la vie, qui me sont à peu pres indifferentes: partie, par vne complexion stupide et insensible, que i’ay aux accidents qui ne donnent à moy de droit fil: laquelle complexion i’estime l’vne des meilleures pieces de ma naturelle condition. Mais les souffrances vrayment essentielles et corporelles, ie les gouste bien vifuement.
Diogenes, who had come to see him, held out a knife: “This will do it, if you like, and soon.” “I don’t mean from life,” he replied, “I mean from my ills.” Sufferings that touch me only through the soul afflict me much less than they do most other men. Partly this comes from judgment: the world thinks many things horrible, or to be avoided at the cost of life, that are almost indifferent to me. Partly it comes from a dull and insensible constitution I have toward accidents that do not strike me head-on—a constitution I consider one of the best parts of my natural condition. But sufferings that are truly essential and bodily I feel very keenly.
Si est-ce pourtant, que les preuoyant autrefois d’vne veuë foible, delicate, et amollie par la iouyssance de cette longue et heureuse santé et repos, que Dieu m’a presté, la meilleure part de mon aage: ie les auoy couceuës par imagination, si insupportables, qu’à la verité i’en auois plus de peur, que ie n’y ay trouué de mal. Par où i’augmente tousiours cette creance, que la pluspart des facultez de nostre ame, comme nous les employons, troublent plus le repos de la vie, qu’elles n’y seruent.
And yet, foreseeing them in the past with a weak and delicate sight, softened by the enjoyment of the long and happy health and repose that God lent me for the better part of my life, I had imagined them so unbearable that in truth I was more afraid of them than I have found them painful. This keeps strengthening my belief that most of the faculties of our soul, as we use them, disturb the repose of life more than they serve it.
Ie suis aux prises auec la pire de toutes les maladies, la plus soudaine, la plus douloureuse, la plus mortelle, et la plus irremediable. I’en ay desia essayé cinq ou six bien longs accez et penibles: toutesfois ou ie me flatte, ou encores y a-t-il en cet estat, dequoy se soustenir, à qui a l’ame deschargée de la crainte de la mort, et deschargée des menasses, conclusions et consequences, dequoy la medecine nous enteste. Mais l’effect mesme de la douleur, n’a pas cette aigreur si aspre et si poignante, qu’vn homme rassis en doiue entrer en rage et en desespoir.
I am grappling with the worst of all diseases: the most sudden, the most painful, the most deadly, and the most incurable. I have already gone through five or six very long and painful bouts of it. Yet either I flatter myself, or there is still something in this state to hold a man up, if his soul is freed from the fear of death, and freed from the threats, conclusions and consequences that medicine stuffs into our heads. And even the actual effect of the pain does not have so harsh and piercing a sting that a settled man should be driven by it to rage and despair.
I’ay aumoins ce profit de la cholique, que ce que ie n’auoy encore peu sur moy, pour me concilier du tout, et m’accointer à la mort, elle le parfera: car d’autant plus elle me pressera, et importunera, d’autant moins me sera la mort à craindre. I’auoy desia gaigné cela, de ne tenir à la vie, que par la vie seulement: elle desnouëra encore cette intelligence. Et Dieu vueille qu’en fin, si son aspreté vient à surmonter mes forces, elle ne me reiette à l’autre extremité non moins vitieuse, d’aymer et desirer mourir. Summum nec metuas diem, nec optes. Ce sont deux passions à craindre, mais l’vne a son remede bien plus prest que l’autre.
I gain at least this profit from the colic: what I had not yet managed to do with myself, to reconcile myself wholly to death and become familiar with it, the colic will complete. For the more it presses and harasses me, the less I shall have to fear death. I had already gained this much: to hold on to life only by life itself. The colic will untie even this bond. And God grant that in the end, if its harshness comes to overpower my strength, it does not throw me to the other extreme, no less vicious: loving and desiring to die. Neither fear your last day nor long for it. These are two passions to be feared, but one has its remedy much closer to hand than the other.
Au demeurant, i’ay tousiours trouué ce precepte ceremonieux, qui ordonne si exactement de tenir bonne contenance et vn maintien desdaigneux, et posé, à la souffrance des maux. Pourquoy la philosophie, qui ne regarde que le vif, et les effects, se va elle amusant à ces apparences externes? Qu’elle laisse ce soing aux farceurs et maistres de rhetorique, qui font tant d’estat de nos gestes. Qu’elle condone hardiment au mal, cette lascheté voyelle, si elle n’est ny cordiale, ny stomacale: et preste ses pleintes volontaires au genre des souspirs, sanglots, palpitations, pallissements, que Nature a mis hors de nostre puissance. Pourueu que le courage soit sans effroy, les parolles sans desespoir, qu’elle se contente.
For the rest, I have always found that precept merely ceremonious which so strictly orders us to keep a good face and a disdainful, composed bearing when we suffer pain. Why does philosophy, which looks only at the living substance and at effects, waste its time on these external appearances? Let it leave that care to actors and teachers of rhetoric, who set such store by our gestures. Let it boldly grant to pain this cowardice of the voice, if it is neither of the heart nor of the stomach; and let it count our voluntary complaints among the sighs, sobs, palpitations and pallors that Nature has put beyond our control. Provided the heart is without fright and the words without despair, let it be content.
Qu’importe que nous tordions nos bras, pourueu que nous ne tordions nos pensées? elle nous dresse pour nous, non pour autruy, pour estre, non pour sembler. Qu’elle s’arreste à gouuerner nostre entendement, qu’elle a pris à instruire. Qu’aux efforts de la cholique, elle maintienne l’ame capable de se recognoistre, de suyure son train accoustumé: combatant la douleur et la soustenant, non se prosternant honteusement à ses pieds: esmeuë et eschauffée du combat, non abatue et renuersée: capable d’entretien et d’autre occupation, iusques à certaine mesure. En accidents si extremes, c’est cruauté de requerir de nous vne démarche si composée. Si nous auons beau ieu, c’est peu que nous ayons mauuaise mine.
What does it matter if we twist our arms, provided we do not twist our thoughts? Philosophy trains us for ourselves, not for others; to be, not to seem. Let it confine itself to governing our understanding, which it has undertaken to instruct. In the onslaughts of the colic, let it keep the soul able to know itself and to follow its accustomed course: fighting the pain and bearing up under it, not prostrating itself shamefully at its feet; stirred and heated by the combat, not beaten down and overthrown; capable of conversation and other occupation, up to a certain point. In accidents so extreme, it is cruelty to require of us so composed a bearing. If we hold a good hand, it matters little that we pull a long face.
Si le corps se soulage en se plaignant, qu’il le face; si l’agitation luy plaist, qu’il se tourneboule et tracasse à sa fantasie: s’il luy semble que le mal s’euapore aucunement (comme aucuns medecins disent que cela aide à la deliurance des femmes enceintes) pour pousser hors la voix auec plus grande violence: ou s’il en amuse son tourment, qu’il crie tout à faict. Ne commandons point à cette voix, qu’elle aille, mais permettons le luy. Epicurus ne pardonne pas seulement à son sage de crier aux tourments, mais il le luy conseille. Pugiles etiam quum feriunt, in iactandis cæstibus ingemiscunt, quia profundenda voce omne corpus intenditur, venitque plaga vehementior. Nous auons assez de travail du mal, sans nous trauailler à ces regles superflues.
If the body finds relief in complaining, let it complain. If agitation pleases it, let it toss and thrash about as it likes. If it seems that the pain somehow evaporates when the voice is forced out more violently (as some physicians say this helps pregnant women in delivery), or if the body distracts its torment that way, let it shout outright. Let us not order this voice to come out, but let us allow it. Epicurus not only forgives his wise man for crying out under torture; he advises him to. Boxers too, when they strike, groan as they swing their gauntlets, because in letting out the voice the whole body is braced and the blow lands harder. We have labor enough from the pain without laboring over these superfluous rules.
Ce que ie dis pour excuser ceux, qu’on voit ordinairement se tempester, aux secousses et assaux de cette maladie: car pour moy, ie l’ay passée iusques à cette heure auec vn peu meilleure contenance et me contente de gemir sans brailler. Non pourtant que ie me mette en peine, pour maintenir cette decence exterieure: car ie fay peu de compte d’vn tel aduantage. Ie preste en cela au mal autant qu’il veut: mais ou mes douleurs ne sont pas si excessiues, ou i’y apporte plus de fermeté que le commun.
I say this to excuse those we commonly see raging under the shocks and assaults of this disease. For my part, I have so far gone through it with a somewhat better countenance, and I content myself with groaning without bawling. Not that I take any pains to maintain this outward decency, for I set little store by such an advantage. In this I give the pain as much as it wants; but either my pains are not so extreme, or I bring more firmness to them than most people.
Ie me plains, Ie me despite, quand les aigres pointures me pressent, mais ie n’en viens point au desespoir, comme celuy là: Eiulatu, questu, gemitu, fremitibus / Resonando multum flebiles voces refert. Ie me taste au plus espais du mal: et ay tousiours trouué que i’estoy capable de dire, de penser, de respondre aussi sainement qu’en vne autre heure, mais non si constamment: la douleur me troublant et destournant. Quand on me tient le plus atterré, et que les assistans m’espargnent, i’essaye souuent mes forces et leur entame moy-mesme des propos les plus esloignez de mon estat. Ie puis tout par vn soudain effort: mais ostez en la durée.
I complain, I fret, when the sharp stabs press me, but I do not come to despair, like that man: With wailing, lament, groaning and roaring, / Making all resound, he utters doleful cries. I sound myself out in the thick of the pain, and I have always found that I could speak, think and answer as sanely as at any other time, but not as steadily, for the pain disturbs and distracts me. When I am thought to be most crushed and those around me spare me, I often test my strength and myself start them on subjects as remote as can be from my condition. I can do anything by a sudden effort; but don’t ask it to last.
O que n’ay ie la faculté de ce songeur de Cicero, qui, songeant embrasser vne garse, trouua qu’il s’estoit deschargé de sa pierre emmy ses draps! Les miennes me desgarsent estrangement. Aux interualles de cette douleur excessiue lors que mes vreteres languissent sans me ronger, ie me remets soudain en ma forme ordinaire: d’autant que mon ame ne prend autre alarme, que la sensible et corporelle.
Oh, why don’t I have the gift of that dreamer in Cicero who, dreaming he was embracing a girl, found he had passed his stone among his sheets! Mine cure me of girls wonderfully. In the intervals of this excessive pain, when my ureters slacken without gnawing at me, I at once return to my ordinary form, since my soul takes no alarm but the physical, bodily one.
Ce que ie doy certainement au soing que i’ay eu à me preparer par discours à tels accidens: Laborum / Nulla mihi noua nunc facies inopináque surgit; / Omnia præcepi, atque animo mecum antè peregi. Ie suis essayé pourtant vn peu bien rudement pour vn apprenti, et d’vn changement bien soudain et bien rude: estant cheu tout à coup, d’vne tres-douce condition de vie, et tres-heureuse, à la plus douloureuse, et penible, qui se puisse imaginer. Car outre ce que c’est vne maladie bien fort à craindre d’elle mesme, elle fait en moy ses commencemens beaucoup plus aspres et difficiles qu’elle n’a accoustumé.
This I certainly owe to the care I have taken to prepare myself by reasoning for such accidents: No new or unexpected face of hardship / Rises before me now; I have foreseen everything / And gone through it all in my mind beforehand. All the same, I am being tried rather roughly for an apprentice, and by a very sudden and harsh change, having fallen all at once from a very sweet and happy condition of life into the most painful and wretched one imaginable. For besides being a disease much to be feared in itself, in me it makes its beginnings far harsher and more difficult than usual.
Les accés me reprennent si souuent, que ie ne sens quasi plus d’entiere santé: ie maintien toutesfois, iusques à cette heure, mon esprit en telle assiette, que pourueu que i’y puisse apporter de la constance, ie me treuue en assez meilleure condition de vie, que mille autres, qui n’ont ny fiéure, ny mal, que celuy qu’ils se donnent eux mesmes, par la faute de leurs discours.
The attacks return so often that I hardly ever feel completely healthy any more. Yet so far I keep my mind in such a state that, provided I can bring constancy to it, I find myself in a much better condition of life than a thousand others who have no fever or ill but what they give themselves through the fault of their own reasoning.
The mystery of heredity
How a drop of seed carries a father’s traits, including the stone, across many years.
Il est certaine façon d’humilité subtile, qui naist de la presomption: comme ceste-cy: Que nous recognoissons nostre ignorance, en plusieurs choses, et sommes si courtois d’auoüer, qu’il y ait és ouurages de Nature, aucunes qualitez et conditions, qui nous sont imperceptibles, et desquelles nostre suffisance ne peut descouurir les moyens et les causes. Par cette honneste et conscientieuse declaration, nous esperons gaigner qu’on nous croira aussi de celles, que nous dirons, entendre. Nous n’auons que faire d’aller trier des miracles et des difficultez estrangeres: il me semble que parmy les choses que nous voyons ordinairement, il y a des estrangetez si incomprehensibles, qu’elles surpassent toute la difficulté des miracles.
There is a certain kind of subtle humility that springs from presumption, such as this: we acknowledge our ignorance in many things, and are courteous enough to admit that in the works of Nature there are some qualities and conditions that we cannot perceive, and whose means and causes our ability cannot discover. By this honest and conscientious declaration we hope to be believed about those we say we do understand. We have no need to go picking out miracles and remote difficulties. It seems to me that among the things we see every day there are oddities so incomprehensible that they surpass all the difficulty of miracles.
Quel monstre est-ce, que cette goutte de semence, dequoy nous sommes produits, porte en soy les impressions, non de la forme corporelle seulement, mais des pensemens et des inclinations de nos peres? Cette goutte d’eau, où loge elle ce nombre infiny de formes? et comme portent elles ces ressemblances, d’vn progrez si temeraire et si desreglé, que l’arriere fils respondra à son bisayeul, le nepueu à l’oncle? En la famille de Lepidus à Rome, il y en a eu trois, non de suite, mais par interualles, qui nasquirent vn mesme œuil couuert de cartilage. A Thebes il y auoit vne race qui portoit dés le ventre de la mere, la forme d’vn fer de lance, et qui ne le portoit, estoit tenu illegitime.
What a prodigy it is that this drop of seed from which we are produced carries in itself the impressions not only of bodily form but of the thoughts and inclinations of our fathers! This drop of water—where does it lodge that infinite number of forms? And how does it carry these resemblances by a course so random and irregular that the great-grandson will take after his great-grandfather, the nephew after his uncle? In the family of Lepidus at Rome there were three, not one after another but at intervals, who were born with the same eye covered with cartilage. At Thebes there was a family whose members bore from their mother’s womb the shape of a spearhead, and anyone who did not bear it was held to be illegitimate.
Aristote dit qu’en certaine nation, où les femmes estoient communes, on assignoit les enfans à leurs peres, par la ressemblance.
Aristotle says that in a certain nation where women were held in common, children were assigned to their fathers by resemblance.
Il est à croire que ie dois à mon pere cette qualité pierreuse: car il mourut merueilleusement affligé d’vne grosse pierre, qu’il auoit en la vessie. Il ne s’apperceut de son mal, que le soixante septiesme an de son aage: et auant cela il n’en auoit eu aucune menasse ou ressentiment, aux reins, aux costez, ny ailleurs: et auoit vescu iusques lors, en vne heureuse santé, et bien peu subiette à maladies, et dura encores sept ans en ce mal, trainant vne fin de vie bien douloureuse. I’estoy nay vingt cinq ans et plus, auant sa maladie, et durant le cours de son meilleur estat, le troisiesme de ses enfans en rang de naissance. Où se couuoit tant de temps, la propension à ce defaut?
It is likely that I owe this stony quality to my father, for he died terribly afflicted by a large stone in his bladder. He did not notice his illness until the sixty-seventh year of his age. Before that he had had no threat or twinge of it, in the kidneys, the sides, or anywhere else; he had lived until then in happy health, very little subject to illness; and he lasted another seven years with this disease, dragging out a very painful end of life. I was born more than twenty-five years before his illness, while he was in his best condition, the third of his children in order of birth. Where was the propensity to this defect brooding all that time?
Et lors qu’il estoit si loing du mal, cette legere piece de sa substance, dequoy il me bastit, comment en portoit elle pour sa part, vne si grande impression? Et comment encore si couuerte, que quarante cinq ans apres, i’aye commencé à m’en ressentir? seul iusques à cette heure, entre tant de freres, et de sœurs, et tous d’vne mere. Qui m’esclaircira de ce progrez, ie le croiray d’autant d’autres miracles qu’il voudra: pourueu que, comme ils font, il ne me donne en payement, vne doctrine beaucoup plus difficile et fantastique, que n’est la chose mesme.
And when he was so far from the disease, how did that slight bit of his substance from which he built me carry so great an impression of it for its share? And how did it keep it so hidden that I began to feel it only forty-five years later—alone so far among so many brothers and sisters, all of one mother? Whoever can enlighten me about this process, I will believe him about as many other miracles as he likes, provided he does not pay me, as they do, with a doctrine far more difficult and fantastic than the thing itself.
A family without doctors
Montaigne’s forebears lived long without medicine, and he inherited their distrust of it.
Que les medecins excusent vn peu ma liberté: car par cette mesme infusion et insinuation fatale, i’ay receu la haine et le mespris de leur doctrine. Cette antipathie, que i’ay à leur art, m’est hereditaire. Mon pere a vescu soixante et quatorze ans, mon ayeul soixante et neuf, mon bisayeul pres de quatre vingts, sans auoir gousté aucune sorte de medecine. Et entre eux, tout ce qui n’estoit de l’vsage ordinaire, tenoit lieu de drogue. La medecine se forme par exemples et experience: aussi fait mon opinion. Voyla pas vne bien expresse experience, et bien aduantageuse? Ie ne sçay s’ils m’en trouueront trois en leurs registres, nais, nourris, et trespassez, en mesme fouïer, mesme toict, ayans autant vescu par leur conduite.
Let the physicians forgive my freedom a little, for by this same fatal infusion and insinuation I have received my hatred and contempt for their doctrine. This antipathy I have for their art is hereditary. My father lived seventy-four years, my grandfather sixty-nine, my great-grandfather nearly eighty, without having tasted any kind of medicine; and among them anything that was not in ordinary use counted as a drug. Medicine is formed by examples and experience; so is my opinion. Is this not a very clear experience, and a very favorable one? I do not know whether they will find me three people in their records, born, raised and dead at the same hearth, under the same roof, who have lived as long under their guidance.
Il faut qu’ils m’aduoüent en cela, que si ce n’est la raison, aumoins que la Fortune est de mon party: or chez les medecins, Fortune vaut bien mieux que la raison. Qu’ils ne me prennent point à cette heure à leur aduantage, qu’ils ne me menassent point, atterré comme ie suis: ce seroit supercherie. Aussi à dire la verité, i’ay assez gaigné sur eux par mes exemples domestiques, encore qu’ils s’arrestent là. Les choses humaines n’ont pas tant de constance: il y a deux cens ans, il ne s’en faut que dix-huict, que cet essay nous dure: car le premier nasquit l’an mil quatre cens deux. C’est vrayment bien raison, que cette experience commence à nous faillir.
They must admit that in this, if reason is not on my side, at least Fortune is; and with physicians Fortune counts for much more than reason. Let them not take advantage of me now; let them not threaten me, laid low as I am: that would be foul play. Besides, to tell the truth, I have won enough against them with my family examples, even if those stop here. Human things do not have so much constancy: this trial has lasted us two hundred years, all but eighteen, for the first was born in the year 1402. It is quite reasonable, really, that this experience should begin to fail us.
Qu’ils ne me reprochent point les maux, qui me tiennent asteure à la gorge: d’auoir vescu sain quarante sept ans pour ma part, n’est-ce pas assez? Quand ce sera le bout de ma carriere, elle est des plus longues.
Let them not reproach me with the ills that now have me by the throat. Is it not enough to have lived healthy, for my part, for forty-seven years? Even if this is the end of my course, it is one of the longer ones.
Mes ancestres auoient la medecine à contre-cœur par quelque inclination occulte et naturelle, car la veuë mesme des drogues faisoit horreur à mon pere. Le Seigneur de Gauiac mon oncle paternel, homme d’Eglise, maladif dés sa naissance, et qui fit toutesfois durer cette vie debile, iusques à soixante sept ans, estant tombé autrefois en vne grosse et vehemente fiéure continue, il fut ordonné par les medecins, qu’on luy declaireroit, s’il ne se vouloit ayder (ils appellent secours ce qui le plus souuent est empeschement) qu’il estoit infailliblement mort. Ce bon homme, tout effrayé comme il fut de cette horrible sentence: Si, respondit-il, ie suis donq mort: mais Dieu rendit tantost apres vain ce prognostique.
My ancestors disliked medicine through some hidden and natural inclination, for the very sight of drugs horrified my father. The Seigneur de Gaviac, my paternal uncle, a churchman, was sickly from birth and yet made that feeble life last until sixty-seven. Once, when he had fallen into a severe and violent continuous fever, the physicians ordered that he be told that if he would not let himself be helped (they call “help” what is most often a hindrance) he was a dead man for certain. The good man, terrified as he was by this horrible sentence, answered: “Then I’m dead.” But God soon after made this prognosis vain.
Le dernier des freres, ils estoyent quatre, Sieur de Bussaguet, et de bien loing le dernier, se soubmit seul, à cet art: pour le commerce, ce croy-ie, qu’il auoit auec les autres arts: car il estoit conseiller en la cour de parlement: et luy succeda si mal, qu’estant par apparence de plus forte complexion, il mourut pourtant long temps auant les autres, sauf vn, le Sieur de Sainct Michel.
The youngest of the brothers—there were four—the Sieur de Bussaguet, younger by a long way, alone submitted to this art, because of his dealings, I believe, with the other arts, for he was a counselor in the court of Parlement. It turned out so badly for him that, though to all appearances of stronger constitution, he died long before the others, except one, the Sieur de Saint-Michel.
Il est possible que i’ay receu d’eux cette dyspathie naturelle à la medecine: mais s’il n’y eust eu que cette consideration, i’eusse essayé de la forcer. Car toutes ces conditions, qui naissent en nous sans raison, elles sont vitieuses: c’est vne espece de maladie qu’il faut combattre. Il peult estre, que i’y auois cette propension, mais ie l’ay appuyée et fortifiée par les discours, qui m’en ont estably l’opinion que i’en ay. Car ie hay aussi cette consideration de refuser la medecine pour l’aigreur de son goust. Ce ne seroit aysément mon humeur, qui trouue la santé digne d’estre r’achetée, par tous les cauteres et incisions les plus penibles qui se facent.
It is possible that I received from them this natural dislike of medicine; but if there had been only that consideration, I would have tried to overcome it. For all those dispositions that arise in us without reason are vicious; they are a kind of disease that must be fought. It may be that I had this propensity, but I have supported and strengthened it by the reasonings that have established in me the opinion I hold. For I also hate the attitude of refusing medicine because of its bitter taste. That would hardly be my temperament, which finds health worth buying back by all the most painful cauteries and incisions there are.
Et suyuant Epicurus, les voluptez me semblent à euiter, si elles tirent à leurs suittes des douleurs plus grandes: et les douleurs à rechercher, qui tirent à leur suitte des voluptez plus grandes. C’est vne pretieuse chose, que la santé: et la seule qui merite à la verité qu’on y employe, non le temps seulement, la sueur, la peine, les biens, mais encore la vie à sa poursuite: d’autant que sans elle, la vie nous vient à estre iniurieuse. La volupté, la sagesse, la science et la vertu, sans elle se ternissent et esuanouyssent.
And following Epicurus, I think pleasures should be avoided if they bring greater pains in their train, and pains sought if they bring greater pleasures in their train. Health is a precious thing, and in truth the only one that deserves our spending on its pursuit not only time, sweat, trouble and goods, but even life itself; for without it life becomes a burden and an injury to us. Pleasure, wisdom, knowledge and virtue tarnish and vanish without it.
Et aux plus fermes et tendus discours, que la philosophie nous veuille imprimer au contraire, nous n’auons qu’à opposer l’image de Platon, estant frappé du haut mal, ou d’vne apoplexie: et en cette presupposition le deffier d’appeller à son secours les riches facultez de son ame. Toute voye qui nous meneroit à la santé, ne se peut dire pour moy ny aspre, ny chere. Mais i’ay quelques autres apparences, qui me font estrangement deffier de toute cette marchandise. Ie ne dy pas qu’il n’y en puisse auoir quelque art: qu’il n’y ait parmy tant d’ouurages de Nature, des choses propres à la conseruation de nostre santé, cela est certain.
And to the firmest and most strenuous arguments that philosophy may try to impress on us to the contrary, we need only oppose the image of Plato struck down by epilepsy or apoplexy, and on that supposition challenge him to call on the rich faculties of his soul for help. To me, no road that would lead us to health can be called either harsh or costly. But I have some other indications that make me strangely distrustful of all this merchandise. I do not say there cannot be some art in it. That there are, among so many works of Nature, things suited to preserving our health—that is certain.
I’entends bien, qu’il y a quelque simple qui humecte, quelque autre qui asseche: ie sçay par experience, et que les refforts produisent des vents, et que les feuilles du sené laschent le ventre: ie sçay plusieurs telles experiences: comme ie sçay que le mouton me nourrit, et que le vin m’eschauffe. Et disoit Solon, que le manger estoit, comme les autres drogues, vne medecine contre la maladie de la faim. Ie ne desaduouë pas l’vsage, que nous tirons du monde, ny ne doubte de la puissance et vberté de Nature, et de son application à nostre besoing. Ie vois bien que les brochets, et les arondes se trouuent bien d’elle.
I quite understand that there is some herb that moistens and some other that dries. I know by experience that horseradish produces wind and that senna leaves loosen the bowels; I know several such experiences, just as I know that mutton nourishes me and wine warms me. And Solon said that eating was, like other drugs, a medicine against the disease of hunger. I do not disown the use we make of the world, nor do I doubt the power and fertility of Nature and its fitness for our needs. I can see that pikes and swallows do well by it.
Ie me deffie des inuentions de nostre esprit: de nostre science et art: en faueur duquel nous l’auons abandonnée, et ses regles: et auquel nous ne sçauons tenir moderation, ny limite. Comme nous appellons iustice, le pastissage des premieres loix qui nous tombent en main, et leur dispensation et pratique, tres inepte souuent et tres inique. Et comme ceux, qui s’en moquent, et qui l’accusent, n’entendent pas pourtant iniurier cette noble vertu: ains condamner seulement l’abus et profanation de ce sacré titre. De mesme, en la medecine, i’honore bien ce glorieux nom, sa proposition, sa promesse, si vtile au genre humain: mais ce qu’il designe entre nous, ie ne l’honore, ny l’estime
What I distrust are the inventions of our mind, of our science and art, for whose sake we have abandoned Nature and her rules, and in which we cannot keep to any moderation or limit. We call justice the hodgepodge of the first laws that fall into our hands, and their administration and practice, which are often very inept and very unjust; and those who mock it and accuse it do not mean to insult that noble virtue, but only to condemn the abuse and profanation of that sacred title. In the same way, with medicine, I do honor that glorious name, its aim, and its promise, so useful to mankind; but what the name stands for among us I neither honor nor esteem.
Against the physicians
Doctors make the healthy sick, claim nature’s cures as their own and blame their failures on patients.
En premier lieu l’experience me le fait craindre: car de ce que i’ay de cognoissance, ie ne voy nulle race de gens si tost malade, et si tard guerie, que celle qui est soubs la iurisdiction de la medecine. Leur santé mesme est alterée et corrompue, par la contrainte des regimes. Les medecins ne se contentent point d’auoir la maladie en gouuernement, ils rendent la santé malade, pour garder qu’on ne puisse en aucune saison eschapper leur authorité. D’vne santé constante et entiere, n’en tirent ils pas l’argument d’vne grande maladie future?
In the first place, experience makes me fear it; for as far as my knowledge goes, I see no kind of people so soon sick and so slow to be cured as those under the jurisdiction of medicine. Their very health is altered and corrupted by the constraint of regimens. Physicians are not content to have illness under their governance; they make health sick, to make sure that no one can escape their authority at any season. From steady and complete health, do they not draw the argument for a great illness to come?
I’ay esté assez souuent malade: i’ay trouué sans leurs secours, mes maladies aussi douces à supporter (et en ay essayé quasi de toutes les sortes) et aussi courtes, qu’à nul autre: et si n’y ay point meslé l’amertume de leurs ordonnances. La santé, ie l’ay libre et entiere, sans regle, et sans autre discipline, que de ma coustume et de mon plaisir. Tout lieu m’est bon à m’arrester: car il ne me faut autres commoditez estant malade, que celles qu’il me faut estant sain. Ie ne me passionne point d’estre sans medecin, sans apotiquaire, et sans secours: dequoy i’en voy la plus part plus affligez que du mal. Quoy?
I have been ill often enough. Without their help I have found my illnesses (and I have tried almost every kind) as easy to bear and as short as anyone’s, and I have not mixed into them the bitterness of their prescriptions. My health I have free and whole, without rules and without any other discipline than my habit and my pleasure. Any place is good for me to stop in, for when I am sick I need no comforts other than those I need when I am well. It does not upset me to be without a physician, without an apothecary, and without help—things I see most people more distressed about than about the illness. What?
eux mesmes nous font ils voir de l’heur et de la durée en leur vie, qui nous puisse tesmoigner quelque apparent effect de leur science?
Do they themselves show us any happiness or length of life that could bear witness to some visible effect of their science?
Il n’est nation qui n’ait esté plusieurs siecles sans la medecine: et les premiers siecles, c’est à dire les meilleurs et les plus heureux: et du monde la dixiesme partie ne s’en sert pas encores à cette heure. Infinies nations ne la cognoissent pas, où l’on vit et plus sainement, et plus longuement, qu’on ne fait icy: et parmy nous, le commun peuple s’en passe heureusement.
There is no nation that has not gone several centuries without medicine—and those the first centuries, that is to say the best and happiest; and even now a tenth of the world does not use it. Countless nations do not know it, where people live both more healthily and longer than they do here; and among us the common people get along happily without it.
Les Romains auoyent esté six cens ans, auant que de la receuoir: mais apres l’auoir essayée, ils la chasserent de leur ville, par l’entremise de Caton le Censeur, qui montra combien aysément il s’en pouuoit passer, ayant vescu quatre vingts et cinq ans: et faict viure sa femme iusqu’à l’extreme vieillesse, non pas sans medecine: mais ouy bien sans medecin: car toute chose qui se trouue salubre à nostre vie, se peut nommer medecine. Il entretenoit, ce dit Plutarque, sa famille en santé, par l’vsage, ce me semble, du lieure. Comme les Arcades, dit Pline, guerissent toutes maladies auec du laict de vache.
The Romans had gone six hundred years before accepting it. But after trying it, they drove it out of their city through the agency of Cato the Censor, who showed how easily he could do without it: he lived eighty-five years and kept his wife alive to extreme old age—not without medicine, but certainly without a physician, for anything found healthful to our life can be called medicine. He kept his household in health, Plutarch says, by the use, if I remember rightly, of hare. Just as the Arcadians, says Pliny, cure all illnesses with cow’s milk.
Et les Lybiens, dit Herodote, iouyssent populairement d’vne rare santé, par cette coustume qu’ils ont: apres que leurs enfants ont atteint quatre ans, de leur causterizer et brusler les veines du chef et des temples: par où ils coupent chemin pour leur vie, à toute defluxion de rheume. Et les gens de village de ce pays, à tous accidens n’employent que du vin le plus fort qu’ils peuuent, meslé à force safran et espice: tout cela auec vne fortune pareille.
And the Libyans, says Herodotus, generally enjoy rare health thanks to a custom of theirs: when their children reach the age of four, they cauterize and burn the veins of their heads and temples, thereby blocking for life the way to any flow of catarrh. And the village people of this country use nothing for every ailment but the strongest wine they can get, mixed with plenty of saffron and spice—all with the same success.
Et à dire vray, de toute cette diuersité et confusion d’ordonnances, quelle autre fin et effect apres tout y a il, que de vuider le ventre? ce que mille simples domestiques peuuent faire. Et si ne sçay si c’est si vtilement qu’ils disent: et si nostre nature n’a point besoing de la residence de ses excremens, iusques à certaine mesure, comme le vin a de sa lie pour sa conseruation. Vous voyez souuent des hommes sains, tomber en vomissemens, ou flux de ventre par accident estranger, et faire vn grand vuidange d’excremens sans besoin aucun precedent, et sans aucune vtilité suyuante, voire auec empirement et dommage.
And to tell the truth, from all this variety and confusion of prescriptions, what other end and effect is there, after all, than emptying the belly? A thousand household herbs can do that. And I do not even know whether it is as useful as they say, or whether our nature does not need its excrements to stay in it up to a point, as wine needs its lees to keep. You often see healthy men fall into vomiting or diarrhea from some accident from outside and make a great discharge of excrement without any previous need and without any benefit afterward—indeed, to their harm and detriment.
C’est du grand Platon, que i’apprins n’agueres, que de trois sortes de mouuements, qui nous appartiennent, le dernier et le pire est celuy des purgations: que nul homme, s’il n’est fol, ne doit entreprendre, qu’à l’extreme necessité. On va troublant et esueillant le mal par oppositions contraires. Il faut que ce soit la forme de viure, qui doucement l’allanguisse et reconduise à sa fin. Les violentes harpades de la drogue et du mal, sont tousiours à nostre perte, puis que la querelle se desmesle chez nous, et que la drogue est vn secours infiable: de sa nature ennemy à nostre santé, et qui n’a accez en nostre estat que par le trouble. Laissons vn peu faire.
It was from the great Plato that I learned not long ago that of the three kinds of movement proper to us, the last and worst is that of purgations, which no man, unless he is a fool, should undertake except in extreme necessity. We go on stirring up and rousing the illness by opposing it with contraries. It must be our way of life that gently weakens it and brings it to its end. The violent grapplings between drug and disease are always at our expense, since the quarrel is fought out inside us, and the drug is an ally not to be trusted: by its nature an enemy to our health, with no access to our system except through disturbance. Let us leave things alone a little.
L’ordre qui pouruoid aux puces et aux taulpes, pouruoid aussi aux hommes, qui ont la patience pareille, à se laisser gouuerner, que les puces et les taulpes. Nous auons beau crier bihore: c’est bien pour nous enroüer, mais non pour l’auancer. C’est vn ordre superbe et impiteux. Nostre crainte, nostre desespoir, le desgouste et retarde de nostre ayde, au lieu de l’y conuier. Il doibt au mal son cours, comme à la santé. De se laisser corrompre en faueur de l’vn, au preiudice des droits de l’autre, il ne le fera pas: il tomberoit en desordre. Suyuons de par Dieu, suyuons. Il meine ceux qui suyuent: ceux qui ne le suyuent pas, il les entraine, et leur rage, et leur medecine ensemble.
The order that provides for fleas and moles provides also for men who have the same patience as fleas and moles in letting themselves be governed. We may shout “Gee up!” all we like: it will make us hoarse, but it will not hurry it on. It is a proud and pitiless order. Our fear and our despair disgust it and slow its help, instead of inviting it. It owes its course to illness as much as to health. It will not let itself be bribed in favor of the one to the prejudice of the other’s rights; that would throw it into disorder. Let us follow, in God’s name, let us follow! It leads those who follow; those who do not, it drags along, rage, medicine and all.
Faittes ordonner vne purgation à vostre ceruelle. Elle y sera mieux employée, qu’à vostre estomach.
Have a purge prescribed for your brain. It will be better spent there than on your stomach.
On demandoit à vn Lacedemonien, qui l’auoit fait viure sain si long temps: L’ignorance de la medecine, respondit-il. Et Adrian l’Empereur crioit sans cesse en mourant, que la presse des medecins l’auoit tué. Vn mauuais luicteur se fit medecin: Courage, luy dit Diogenes, tu as raison, tu mettras à cette heure en terre ceux qui t’y ont mis autresfois. Mais ils ont cet heur, selon Nicocles, que le soleil esclaire leur succez, et la terre cache leur faute.
A Spartan was asked what had kept him healthy so long. “Ignorance of medicine,” he replied. And the Emperor Hadrian kept crying out as he was dying that the crowd of physicians had killed him. A bad wrestler became a physician. “Well done,” Diogenes told him, “you’re right: now you will put into the ground those who once put you there.” But they have this good luck, according to Nicocles, that the sun shines on their successes and the earth hides their mistakes.
Et outre cela, ils ont vne façon bien auantageuse, à se seruir de toutes sortes d’euenemens: car ce que la Fortune, ce que la Nature, ou quelque autre cause estrangere, desquelles le nombre est infini, produit en nous de bon et de salutaire, c’est le priuilege de la medecine de se l’attribuer. Tous les heureux succez qui arriuent au patient, qui est soubs son regime, c’est d’elle qu’il les tient. Les occasions qui m’ont guery moy, et qui guerissent mille autres, qui n’appellent point les medecins à leurs secours, ils les vsurpent en leurs subiects.
Besides that, they have a very advantageous way of making use of every kind of outcome. Whatever good and healthful effect Fortune, Nature, or some other outside cause (and there are infinitely many) produces in us, it is the privilege of medicine to take credit for it. All the happy successes that befall the patient under its regimen, he owes to medicine. The causes that have cured me, and that cure a thousand others who never call in physicians, they appropriate in their own patients.
Et quant aux mauuais accidens, ou ils les desaduoüent tout à fait, en attribuant la coulpe au patient, par des raisons si vaines, qu’ils n’ont garde de faillir d’en trouuer tousiours assez bon nombre de telles: Il a descouuert son bras, il a ouy le bruit d’vn coche: Rhedarum transitus arcto / Vicorum inflexu: on a entrouuert sa fenestre, il s’est couché sur le costé gauche, ou passé par sa teste quelque pensement penible. Somme vne parolle, vn songe, vne œuillade, leur semble suffisante excuse pour se descharger de faute.
As for bad outcomes, either they disown them entirely and put the blame on the patient, with reasons so empty that they never run any risk of failing to find plenty of them: he uncovered his arm; he heard the noise of a coach—carriages passing / In the narrow bend of the streets; someone opened his window a crack; he lay on his left side; or some painful thought passed through his head. In short, a word, a dream, a glance seems to them excuse enough to clear themselves of blame.
Ou, s’il leur plaist, ils se seruent encore de cet empirement, et en font leurs affaires, par cet autre moyen qui ne leur peut iamais faillir: c’est de nous payer lors que la maladie se trouue reschaufee par leurs applications, de l’asseurance qu’ils nous donnent, qu’elle seroit bien autrement empirée sans leurs remedes. Celuy qu’ils ont ietté d’vn morfondement en vne fieure quotidienne, il eust eu sans eux, la continue. Ils n’ont garde de faire mal leurs besongnes, puis que le dommage leur reuient à profit. Vrayement ils ont raison de requerir du malade, vne application de creance fauorable: il faut qu’elle le soit à la verité en bon escient, et bien souple, pour s’appliquer à des imaginations si mal aisées à croire.
Or, if they please, they use even the worsening and turn it to account by another means that can never fail them: when the illness is found to be inflamed by their treatments, they pay us with the assurance that it would have been far worse without their remedies. The man they have thrown from a chill into a daily fever would have had the continuous fever without them. They have no fear of doing their work badly, since the damage turns to their profit. Truly they are right to require of the patient a favorable disposition to believe; it must indeed be favorable in earnest, and very supple, to bend itself to notions so hard to believe.
Platon disoit bien à propos, qu’il n’appartenoit qu’aux medecins de mentir en toute liberté, puis que nostre salut despend de la vanité, et fauceté de leurs promesses. Æsope autheur de tres-rare excellence, et duquel peu de gens descouurent toutes les graces, est plaisant à nous representer cette authorité tyrannique, qu’ils vsurpent sur ces pauures ames affoiblies et abatuës par le mal, et la crainte: car il conte, qu’un malade estant interrogé par son medecin, quelle operation il sentoit des medicamens, qu’il luy auoit donnez: I’ay fort sué, respondit-il. Cela est bon, dit le medecin. Vne autre fois il luy demanda encore, comme il s’estoit porté depuis: I’ay eu vn froid extreme, fit-il, et si ay fort tremblé.
Plato said very aptly that only physicians had the right to lie with complete freedom, since our health depends on the vanity and falseness of their promises. Aesop, an author of very rare excellence, whose graces few people discover in full, is amusing in the way he shows us the tyrannical authority they usurp over these poor souls weakened and cast down by illness and fear. He tells how a sick man, asked by his physician what effect he felt from the medicines he had given him, answered: “I have sweated a great deal.” “That is good,” said the physician. Another time the physician asked him again how he had been since. “I have been extremely cold,” he said, “and I shivered a lot.”
Cela est bon, suyuit le medecin: à la troisieme fois, il luy demanda de rechef, comment il se portoit: Ie me sens, dit-il, enfler et bouffir comme d’hydropisie. Voyla qui va bien, adiousta le medecin. L’vn de ses domestiques venant apres à s’enquerir à luy de son estat: Certes mon amy, respond-il, à force de bien estre, ie me meurs.
“That is good,” the physician went on. The third time he asked him once more how he was. “I feel myself swelling and puffing up,” he said, “as if with dropsy.” “That is going well,” added the physician. Afterward one of his household came to ask him how he was. “Truly, my friend,” he replies, “I am dying of being so well.”
Il y auoit en Ægypte vne loy plus iuste, par laquelle le medecin prenoit son patient en charge les trois premiers iours, aux perils et fortunes du patient: mais les trois iours passez, c’estoit aux siens propres. Car quelle raison y a-il, qu’Æsculapius leur patron ait esté frappé du foudre, pour auoir r’amené Hypolitus de mort à vie, Nam Pater omnipotens aliquem indignatus ab vmbris / Mortalem infernis, ad lumina surgere vitæ, / Ipse repertorem medicinæ talis et artis, / Fulmine Phœbigenam Stygias detrusit ad vndas: et ses suyuans soyent absous, qui enuoyent tant d’ames de la vie à la mort? Vn medecin vantoit à Nicoclés, son art estre de grande auctorité: Vrayement c’est mon, dit Nicoclés, qui peut impunement tuer tant de gens.
In Egypt there was a juster law, by which the physician took charge of his patient for the first three days at the patient’s risk and peril, but once the three days were past, at his own. For what reason is there that Aesculapius, their patron, should have been struck by lightning for bringing Hippolytus back from death to life, For the almighty Father, indignant that any mortal / Should rise from the shades below to the light of life, / Himself hurled down with his thunderbolt to the Stygian waters / The son of Phoebus, discoverer of such healing and such skill, while his followers, who send so many souls from life to death, go free? A physician was boasting to Nicocles that his art carried great authority. “Indeed it does,” said Nicocles, “since it can kill so many people with impunity.”
Au demeurant, si i’eusse esté de leur conseil, i’eusse rendu ma discipline plus sacrée et mysterieuse: ils auoyent assez bien commencé, mais ils n’ont pas acheué de mesme. C’estoit vn bon commencement, d’auoir fait des dieux et des dæmons autheurs de leur science, d’auoir pris vn langage à part, vne escriture à part. Quoy qu’en sente la philosophie, que c’est folie de conseiller vn homme pour son profit, par maniere non intelligible: Vt sî quis medicus imperet vt sumat Terrigenam, herbigradam, domiportam, sanguine cassam. C’estoit vne bonne regle en leur art, et qui accompagne toutes les arts fanatiques, vaines, et supernaturelles, qu’il faut que la foy du patient, preoccupe par bonne esperance et asseurance, leur effect et operation.
For the rest, if I had been in their counsels, I would have made my discipline more sacred and mysterious. They had made a fairly good start, but they did not finish in the same way. It was a good beginning to have made gods and daemons the authors of their science, and to have adopted a language of its own and a script of its own—whatever philosophy may think of it, holding that it is folly to advise a man for his own good in a way he cannot understand: As if a physician were to order a patient to take an earth-born, grass-walking, house-carrying, bloodless creature. It was a good rule in their art, and one that goes with all fanatical, vain and supernatural arts, that the patient’s faith must anticipate their effect and operation with good hope and assurance.
Laquelle regle ils tiennent iusques là, que le plus ignorant et grossier medecin, ils le trouuent plus propre à celuy, qui a fiance en luy, que le plus experimenté, et incognu. Le choix mesmes de la plus part de leurs drogues est aucunement mysterieux et diuin. Le pied gauche d’vne tortue, l’vrine d’vn lezart, la fiante d’vn elephant, le foye d’vne taupe, du sang tiré soubs l’aile droite d’vn pigeon blanc: et pour nous autres coliqueux (tant ils abusent desdaigneusement de nostre misere) des crottes de rat puluerisées, et telles autres singeries, qui ont plus le visage d’vn enchantement magicien, que de science solide.
They keep to this rule so far that they consider the most ignorant and crude physician better suited to a patient who trusts him than the most experienced one whom he does not know. Even the choice of most of their drugs is somewhat mysterious and divine: the left foot of a tortoise, the urine of a lizard, elephant dung, the liver of a mole, blood drawn from under the right wing of a white pigeon; and for us colic sufferers (so disdainfully do they abuse our misery), powdered rat droppings, and other such monkey tricks that look more like a magic spell than solid science.
Ie laisse à part le nombre imper de leurs pillules: la destination de certains iours et festes de l’année: la distinction des heures, à cueillir les herbes de leurs ingrediens: et cette grimace rebarbatiue et prudente, de leur port et contenance, dequoy Pline mesme se mocque. Mais ils ont failly, veux-ie dire, de ce qu’à ce beau commencement, ils n’ont adiousté cecy, de rendre leurs assemblées et consultations plus religieuses et secretes: aucun homme profane n’y deuoit auoir accez, non plus qu’aux secretes ceremonies d’Æsculape.
I leave aside the odd number of their pills, the assigning of certain days and feasts of the year, the distinguishing of hours for gathering the herbs for their ingredients, and that forbidding, knowing grimace of their bearing and countenance, which even Pliny mocks. But where they failed, I mean, was in not adding to this fine beginning one more thing: making their meetings and consultations more religious and secret. No profane man should have been admitted to them, any more than to the secret ceremonies of Aesculapius.
Car il aduient de cette faute, que leur irresolution, la foiblesse de leurs argumens, diuinations et fondements, l’aspreté de leurs contestations, pleines de haine, de ialousie, et de consideration particuliere, venants à estre descouuertes à vn chacun, il faut estre merueilleusement aueugle, si on ne se sent bien hazardé entre leurs mains. Qui vid iamais medecin se seruir de la recepte de son compagnon, sans y retrancher ou adiouster quelque chose? Ils trahissent assez par là leur art: et nous font voir qu’ils y considerent plus leur reputation, et par consequent leur profit, que l’interest de leurs patiens.
For from this fault it comes about that their irresolution, the weakness of their arguments, divinations and foundations, and the bitterness of their disputes, full of hatred, jealousy and private interest, are laid open to everyone. And then one must be wonderfully blind not to feel oneself in great danger in their hands. Who ever saw a physician use a colleague’s prescription without taking something out or putting something in? By this they give their art away plainly enough, and show us that they care more about their reputation, and therefore their profit, than about the interest of their patients.
Celuy là de leurs docteurs est plus sage, qui leur a anciennement prescript, qu’vn seul se mesle de traiter vn malade: car s’il ne fait rien qui vaille, le reproche à l’art de la medecine, n’en sera pas fort grand pour la faute d’vn homme seul: et au rebours, la gloire en sera grande, s’il vient à bien rencontrer: là où quand ils sont beaucoup, ils descrient à tous les coups le mestier: d’autant qu’il leur aduient de faire plus souuent mal que bien.
Wiser was that one of their teachers who long ago laid down for them that only one physician should take charge of treating a patient. For if he does nothing worthwhile, the reproach to the art of medicine will not be very great for one man’s fault; and conversely, the glory will be great if he happens to hit the mark. Whereas when there are many of them, they discredit the profession every time, since they happen to do harm more often than good.
Ils se deuoient contenter du perpetuel desaccord, qui se trouue és opinions des principaux maistres et autheurs anciens de cette science, lequel n’est cogneu que des hommes versez aux liures, sans faire voir encore au peuple les controuerses et inconstances de iugement, qu’ils nourrissent et continuent entre eux
They should have been content with the perpetual disagreement found in the opinions of the chief masters and ancient authors of this science, which is known only to men versed in books, without also showing the common people the controversies and inconsistencies of judgment that they nourish and keep up among themselves.
A science at war with itself
Ancient and modern physicians overturn one another’s doctrines, and the patient pays.
Voulons nous vn exemple de l’ancien debat de la medecine? Hierophilus loge la cause originelle des maladies aux humeurs: Erasistratus, au sang des arteres: Asclepiades, aux atomes inuisibles s’escoulants en noz pores: Alcmæon, en l’exuperance ou deffaut des forces corporelles: Diocles, en l’inequalité des elemens du corps, et en la qualité de l’air, que nous respirons: Strato, en l’abondance, crudité, et corruption de l’alimant que nous prenons: Hippocrates la loge aux esprits. Il y a l’vn de leurs amis, qu’ils cognoissent mieux que moy, qui s’escrie à ce propos, que la science la plus importante qui soit en nostre vsage, comme celle qui a charge de nostre conseruation et santé, c’est de mal’heur, la plus incertaine, la plus trouble, et agitée de plus de changemens.
Do we want an example of the ancient debate in medicine? Herophilus places the original cause of diseases in the humors; Erasistratus, in the blood of the arteries; Asclepiades, in invisible atoms flowing through our pores; Alcmaeon, in the excess or deficiency of bodily strength; Diocles, in the imbalance of the body’s elements and in the quality of the air we breathe; Strato, in the abundance, crudeness and corruption of the food we eat; Hippocrates places it in the spirits. One of their friends, whom they know better than I do, exclaims on this subject that the most important science we have in use, since it has charge of our preservation and health, is unfortunately the most uncertain, the most confused, and the most shaken by changes.
Il n’y a pas grand danger de nous mescomter à la hauteur du soleil, ou en la fraction de quelque supputation astronomique: mais icy, où il va de tout nostre estre, ce n’est pas sagesse, de nous abandonner à la mercy de l’agitation de tant de vents contraires.
There is no great danger if we miscalculate the height of the sun, or a fraction in some astronomical computation. But here, where our whole being is at stake, it is not wisdom to abandon ourselves to the mercy of so many contrary winds.
Auant la guerre Peloponnesiaque, il n’estoit pas grands nouuelles de cette science: Hippocrates la mit en credit: tout ce que cettuy-cy auoit estably, Chrysippus le renuersa: depuis Erasistratus petit fils d’Aristote, tout ce que Chrysippus en auoit escrit. Apres ceux-cy, suruindrent les Empiriques, qui prindrent vne voye toute diuerse des anciens, au maniement de cet art. Quand le credit de ces derniers commença à s’enuieillir, Herophilus mit en vsage vne autre sorte de medecine, qu’Asclepiades vint à combattre et aneantir à son tour. A leur reng gaignerent authorité les opinions de Themison, et depuis de Musa, et encore apres celles de Vexius Valens, medecin fameux par l’intelligence qu’il auoit auec Messalina.
Before the Peloponnesian War there was little news of this science. Hippocrates brought it into repute. Everything he had established, Chrysippus overturned; then Erasistratus, Aristotle’s grandson, overturned everything Chrysippus had written on it. After these came the Empirics, who took a path quite different from the ancients’ in practicing this art. When the credit of these last began to grow old, Herophilus brought another kind of medicine into use, which Asclepiades in turn came to attack and destroy. Next the opinions of Themison gained authority, then those of Musa, and after that those of Vettius Valens, a physician famous for his intimacy with Messalina.
L’empire de la medecine tomba du temps de Neron à Thessalus, qui abolit et condamna tout ce qui en auoit esté tenu iusques à luy. La doctrine de cettuy-cy fut abbattue par Crinas de Marseille, qui apporta de nouueau, de regler toutes les operations medecinales, aux ephemerides et mouuemens des astres, manger, dormir, et boire à l’heure qu’il plairoit à la lune et à Mercure. Son authorité fut bien tost apres supplantée par Charinus, medecin de cette mesme ville de Marseille. Cettuy-cy combattoit non seulement la medecine ancienne, mais encore l’vsage des bains chauds, public, et tant de siecles auparauant accoustumé. Il faisoit baigner les hommes dans l’eau froide, en hyuer mesme, et plongeoit les malades dans l’eau naturelle des ruisseaux.
In Nero’s time the empire of medicine fell to Thessalus, who abolished and condemned everything that had been held about it until his day. His doctrine was overthrown by Crinas of Marseille, who brought in the novelty of regulating all medical operations by the ephemerides and movements of the stars: eating, sleeping and drinking at whatever hour pleased the moon and Mercury. His authority was soon afterward supplanted by Charinus, a physician of that same city of Marseille. This man attacked not only the old medicine but also the use of hot baths, which was public and had been customary for so many centuries before. He had men bathe in cold water, even in winter, and plunged the sick into the natural water of streams.
Iusques au temps de Pline aucun Romain n’auoit encore daigné exercer la medecine: elle se faisoit par des estrangers, et Grecs: comme elle se fait entre nous François, par des Latineurs. Car comme dit vn tres-grand medecin, nous ne receuons pas aisément la medecine que nous entendons; non plus que la drogue que nous cueillons. Si les nations, desquelles nous retirons le gayac, la salseperille, et le bois d’esquine, ont des medecins, combien pensons nous par cette mesme recommendation de l’estrangeté, la rareté, et la cherté, qu’ils façent feste de noz choulx, et de nostre persil? car qui oseroit mespriser les choses recherchées de si loing, au hazard d’vne si longue peregrination et si perilleuse?
Until Pliny’s time no Roman had yet deigned to practice medicine. It was done by foreigners and Greeks, just as among us French it is done by people who talk Latin. For, as a very great physician says, we do not readily accept a medicine we understand, any more than a drug we gather ourselves. If the nations from which we bring guaiacum, sarsaparilla and chinaroot have physicians, how highly must they prize our cabbages and our parsley, do we suppose, on the same recommendation of strangeness, rarity and costliness? For who would dare scorn things sought from so far away, at the risk of so long and so perilous a journey?
Depuis ces anciennes mutations de la medecine, il y en a eu infinies autres iusques à nous; et le plus souuent mutations entieres et vniuerselles; comme sont celles que produisent de nostre temps, Paracelse, Fiorauanti et Argenterius: car ils ne changent pas seulement vne recepte, mais, à ce qu’on me dit, toute la contexture et police du corps de la medecine, accusans d’ignorance et de pipperie, ceux qui en ont faict profession iusques à eux. Ie vous laisse à penser où en est le pauure patient.
Since these ancient changes in medicine there have been countless others down to our own day, and most often complete and universal changes, such as those produced in our time by Paracelsus, Fioravanti and Argenterius. For they change not merely a prescription but, so I am told, the whole structure and government of the body of medicine, accusing of ignorance and fraud all who practiced it before them. I leave you to imagine where that leaves the poor patient.
Si encor nous estions asseurez, quand ils se mescontent, qu’il ne nous nuisist pas, s’il ne nous profite; ce seroit vne bien raisonnable composition, de se hazarder d’acquerir du bien, sans se mettre en danger de perte. Æsope faict ce comte, qu’vn qui auoit acheté vn More esclaue, estimant que cette couleur luy fust venue par accident, et mauuais traictement de son premier maistre, le fit medeciner de plusieurs bains et breuuages, auec grand soing: il aduint, que le More n’en amenda aucunement sa couleur basanee, mais qu’il en perdit entierement sa premiere santé. Combien de fois nous aduient-il, de voir les medecins imputans les vns aux autres, la mort de leurs patiens?
If at least we were sure that, when they make a mistake, it would not harm us even if it did not help us, that would be a very reasonable bargain: to risk gaining some good without putting ourselves in danger of loss. Aesop tells the story of a man who had bought a dark-skinned slave and, thinking that his color had come to him by accident and from ill treatment by his first master, had him doctored with great care with many baths and potions. It turned out that the slave’s dark complexion was not improved in the least, but he entirely lost the good health he had had before. How often do we see physicians blaming one another for the death of their patients?
Il me souuient d’vne maladie populaire, qui fut aux villes de mon voisinage, il y a quelques années, mortelle et tres-dangereuse: cet orage estant passé, qui auoit emporté vn nombre infiny d’hommes; l’vn des plus fameux medecins de toute la contrée, vint à publier vn liuret, touchant cette matiere, par lequel il se rauise, de ce qu’ils auoyent vsé de la saignée, et confesse que c’est l’vne des causes principales du dommage, qui en estoit aduenu. Dauantage leurs autheurs tiennent, qu’il n’y a aucune medecine, qui n’ait quelque partie nuisible. Et si celles mesmes qui nous seruent, nous offencent aucunement, que doiuent faire celles qu’on nous applique du tout hors de propos?
I remember an epidemic that struck the towns in my neighborhood some years ago, deadly and very dangerous. When this storm had passed, after carrying off countless people, one of the most famous physicians in the whole region published a little book on the subject, in which he has second thoughts about their having used bloodletting, and admits that it was one of the chief causes of the harm that resulted. Moreover their authors hold that there is no medicine without some harmful part. And if even those that help us do us some harm, what must those do that are applied to us quite wrongly?
De moy, quand il n’y auroit autre chose, i’estime qu’à ceux qui hayssent le goust de la medecine, ce soit vn dangereux effort, et de preiudice, de l’aller aualler à vne heure si incommode, auec tant de contre-cœur: et croy que cela essaye merueilleusement le malade, en vne saison, où il a tant besoin de repos. Outre ce, qu’à considerer les occasions, surquoy ils fondent ordinairement la cause de noz maladies, elles sont si legeres et si delicates, que i’argumente par là, qu’vne bien petite erreur en la dispensation de leurs drogues, peut nous apporter beaucoup de nuisance.
For my part, even if there were nothing else, I think that for those who hate the taste of medicine it is a dangerous and damaging strain to have to swallow it at such an inconvenient hour and with such loathing; and I believe it tries the patient terribly, at a time when he so needs rest. Besides, if we consider the occasions on which they usually ground the cause of our illnesses, they are so slight and so delicate that I conclude from this that a very small error in dispensing their drugs can do us a great deal of harm.
Or si le mescomte du medecin est dangereux, il nous va bien mal: car il est bien mal-aisé qu’il n’y retombe souuent: il a besoin de trop de pieces, considerations, et circonstances, pour affuster iustement son dessein. Il faut qu’il cognoisse la complexion du malade, sa temperature, ses humeurs, ses inclinations, ses actions, ses pensements mesmes, et ses imaginations.
Now if the physician’s mistake is dangerous, we are in a bad way, for it is very hard for him not to fall into it often: he needs too many pieces, considerations and circumstances to aim his plan accurately. He must know the patient’s constitution, his temperament, his humors, his inclinations, his actions, even his thoughts and his fancies.
Il faut qu’il se responde des circonstances externes, de la nature du lieu, condition de l’air et du temps, assiette des planetes, et leurs influances: qu’il sçache en la maladie les causes, les signes, les affections, les iours critiques: en la drogue, le poix, la force, le pays, la figure, l’aage, la dispensation: et faut que toutes ces pieces, il les sçache proportionner et rapporter l’vne à l’autre, pour en engendrer vne parfaicte symmetrie. A quoy s’il faut tant soit peu, si de tant de ressorts, il y en a vn tout seul, qui tire à gauche, en voyla assez pour nous perdre.
He must take account of external circumstances: the nature of the place, the condition of the air and the weather, the position of the planets and their influences. He must know, in the disease, its causes, its symptoms, its effects, its critical days; in the drug, its weight, strength, country, shape, age and dispensing. And he must know how to proportion all these pieces and relate them to one another so as to produce a perfect symmetry. If he falls short in this in the slightest, if out of so many springs one single one pulls the wrong way, that is enough to finish us.
Dieu sçait, de quelle difficulté est la cognoissance de la pluspart de ces parties: car pour exemple, comment trouuera-il le signe propre de la maladie; chacune estant capable d’vn infiny nombre de signes? Combien ont ils de debats entr’eux et de doubtes, sur l’interpretation des vrines? Autrement d’où viendroit cette altercation continuelle que nous voyons entr’eux sur la cognoissance du mal? Comment excuserions nous cette faute, où ils tombent si souuent, de prendre martre pour renard? Aux maux, que i’ay eu, pour peu qu’il y eust de difficulté, ie n’en ay iamais trouué trois d’accord. Ie remarque plus volontiers les exemples qui me touchent.
God knows how hard it is to know most of these parts. For example, how will he find the proper symptom of the disease, when each one admits of an infinite number of symptoms? How many disputes and doubts do they have among themselves over the reading of urine? Otherwise where would it come from, this continual wrangling we see among them over identifying the illness? How could we excuse the mistake they so often fall into, of taking a marten for a fox? In the illnesses I have had, if there was the least difficulty, I have never found three of them in agreement. I note most readily the examples that concern me.
Dernierement à Paris vn Gentil-homme fut taillé par l’ordonnance des medecins, auquel on ne trouua de pierre non plus à la vessie, qu’à la main; et là mesmes, vn Euesque qui m’estoit fort amy, auoit esté instamment sollicité par la pluspart des medecins, qu’il appelloit à son conseil, de se faire tailler: i’aydoy moy mesme soubs la foy d’autruy, à le luy suader: quand il fut trespassé, et qu’il fut ouuert, on trouua qu’il n’auoit mal qu’aux reins. Ils sont moins excusables en cette maladie, d’autant qu’elle est aucunement palpable. C’est par là que la chirurgie me semble beaucoup plus certaine, par ce qu’elle voit et manie ce qu’elle fait; il y a moins à coniecturer et à deuiner.
Recently in Paris a gentleman was cut for the stone on the physicians’ orders, and no more stone was found in his bladder than in his hand. And in the same city a bishop who was a close friend of mine had been urgently pressed by most of the physicians he called into consultation to have himself cut; I myself, trusting others’ word, helped persuade him. When he had died and was opened, it was found that his trouble was only in the kidneys. They are less excusable with this disease in that it is to some extent palpable. That is why surgery seems to me much more certain: it sees and handles what it is doing; there is less to conjecture and guess.
Là où les medecins n’ont point de speculum matricis, qui leur descouure nostre cerueau, nostre poulmon, et nostre foye.
Whereas physicians have no speculum for the womb to show them our brain, our lungs and our liver.
Les promesses mesmes de la medecine sont incroyables. Car ayant à prouuoir à diuers accidents et contraires, qui nous pressent souuent ensemble, et qui ont vne relation quasi necessaire, comme la chaleur du foye, et froideur de l’estomach, ils nous vont persuadant que de leurs ingrediens, cettuy-cy eschauffera l’estomach, cet autre refraichira le foye: l’vn a sa charge d’aller droit aux reins, voire iusques à la vessie, sans estaler ailleurs ses operations; et conseruant ses forces et sa vertu, en ce long chemin et plein de destourbiers, iusques au lieu, au seruice duquel il est destiné, par sa proprieté occulte: l’autre assechera le cerueau: celuy là humectera le poulmon.
Even the promises of medicine are incredible. They have to provide against various and contrary ailments that often press on us together and are almost necessarily linked, such as heat in the liver and coldness in the stomach. So they try to persuade us that, of their ingredients, this one will warm the stomach and that one will cool the liver; one has the task of going straight to the kidneys, or even to the bladder, without spreading its effects anywhere else, keeping its strength and virtue along that long road full of obstacles until it reaches the place it is destined to serve by its occult property; another will dry the brain; that one will moisten the lungs.
De tout cet amas, ayant fait vne mixtion de breuuage, n’est-ce pas quelque espece de resuerie, d’esperer que ces vertus s’aillent diuisant, et triant de cette confusion et meslange, pour courir à charges si diuerses? Ie craindrois infiniement qu’elles perdissent, ou eschangeassent leurs ethiquettes, et troublassent leurs quartiers. Et qui pourroit imaginer, qu’en cette confusion liquide, ces facultez ne se corrompent, confondent, et alterent l’vne l’autre? Quoy, que l’execution de cette ordonnance despend d’vn autre officier, à la foy et mercy duquel nous abandonnons encore vn coup nostre vie?
When they have made a single potion out of this whole heap, is it not a kind of madness to hope that these virtues will divide and sort themselves out of this confusion and mixture, to run off on such different errands? I should be terribly afraid that they might lose or swap their labels and mix up their quarters. And who could imagine that in this liquid confusion these faculties do not corrupt, confound and alter one another? And what of the fact that carrying out this prescription depends on yet another officer, to whose good faith and mercy we once again abandon our life?
Comme nous auons des pourpointiers, des chaussetiers pour nous vestir; et en sommes d’autant mieux seruis, que chacun ne se mesle que de son subiect, et a sa science plus restreinte et plus courte, que n’a vn tailleur, qui embrasse tout. Et comme, à nous nourrir, les grands, pour plus de commodité ont des offices distinguez de potagers et de rostisseurs, dequoy vn cuisinier, qui prend la charge vniuerselle, ne peut si exquisement venir à bout. De mesme à nous guairir, les Ægyptiens auoient raison de reiecter ce general mestier de medecin, et descoupper cette profession à chasque maladie, à chasque partie du corps son œuurier.
We have doublet-makers and hose-makers to clothe us, and we are all the better served because each deals only with his own subject and has a narrower and shorter range of knowledge than a tailor who takes in everything. And to feed us, great people have, for greater convenience, separate offices of soup-cooks and roasters, which a cook who takes on the whole charge cannot manage so exquisitely. In the same way, for curing us, the Egyptians were right to reject the general trade of physician and to cut the profession up: for each disease, for each part of the body, its own workman.
Car cette partie en estoit bien plus proprement et moins confusement traictée, de ce qu’on ne regardoit qu’à elle specialement. Les nostres ne s’aduisent pas, que, qui pouruoid à tout, ne pouruoid à rien: que la totale police de ce petit monde, leur est indigestible. Cependant qu’ils craignent d’arrester le cours d’vn dysenterique, pour ne luy causer la fieure, ils me tuerent vn amy, qui valoit mieux, que tout tant qu’ils sont. Ils mettent leurs diuinations au poids, à l’encontre des maux presents: et pour ne guarir le cerueau au preiudice de l’estomach, offencent l’estomach, et empirent le cerueau, par ces drogues tumultuaires et dissentieuses.
For that part was treated much more properly and less confusedly because it alone received special attention. Ours do not realize that he who provides for everything provides for nothing; that the total government of this little world is more than they can digest. While they were afraid to stop the flux of a man with dysentery, so as not to give him a fever, they killed a friend of mine who was worth more than the whole lot of them put together. They weigh their guesses against the present ills; and so as not to cure the brain at the expense of the stomach, they injure the stomach and make the brain worse with these turbulent and quarrelsome drugs.
Quant à la varieté et foiblesse des raisons de cet’ art, elle est plus apparente qu’en aucun’ autre art. Les choses aperitiues sont vtiles à vn homme coliqueux, d’autant qu’ouurans les passages et les dilatans, elles acheminent cette matiere gluante, de laquelle se bastit la graue, et la pierre, et conduisent contre-bas, ce qui se commence à durcir et amasser aux reins. Les choses aperitiues sont dangereuses à vn homme coliqueux, d’autant qu’ouurans les passages et les dilatans, elles acheminent vers les reins, la matiere propre à bastir la graue, lesquels s’en saisissans volontiers pour cette propension qu’ils y ont, il est mal aisé qu’ils n’en arrestent beaucoup de ce qu’on y aura charrié.
As for the variety and weakness of the reasoning of this art, it is more obvious than in any other art. Aperients are useful to a man with colic, because by opening and dilating the passages they move along that sticky matter from which gravel and stone are built, and carry downward what is beginning to harden and collect in the kidneys. Aperients are dangerous to a man with colic, because by opening and dilating the passages they move toward the kidneys the matter suited to building gravel; and since the kidneys readily seize on it, from the propensity they have for it, they can hardly fail to keep back much of what has been carried there.
D’auantage, si de fortune il s’y rencontre quelque corps, vn peu plus grosset qu’il ne faut pour passer tous ces destroicts, qui restent à franchir pour l’expeller au dehors, ce corps estant esbranlé par ces choses aperitiues, et ietté dans ces canaux estroits, venant à les boucher, acheminera vne certaine mort et tres-douloureuse.
Moreover, if by chance some body is lodged there that is a little too large to pass through all the narrows still to be crossed before it is expelled, this body, set moving by these aperients and thrown into those narrow channels, will block them and bring on a certain and very painful death.
Ils ont vne pareille fermeté aux conseils qu’ils nous donnent de nostre regime de viure: il est bon de tomber souuent de l’eau, car nous voyons par experience, qu’en la laissant croupir, nous luy donnons loisir de se descharger de ses excremens, et de sa lye, qui seruira de matiere à bastir la pierre en la vessie: il est bon de ne tomber point souuent de l’eau, car les poisans excrements qu’elle traine quant et elle, ne s’emporteront point, s’il n’y a de la violence, comme on void par experience, qu’vn torrent qui roule auecques roideur, baloye bien plus nettement le lieu où il passe, que ne fait le cours d’vn ruisseau mol et lasche.
They show the same firmness in the advice they give us about our way of life. It is good to pass water often, for we see by experience that by letting it stagnate we give it leisure to deposit its sediment and dregs, which will serve as material for building a stone in the bladder. It is good not to pass water often, for the heavy sediment it carries with it will not be swept away without some force; as we see by experience that a torrent rushing down vigorously sweeps the place it passes over much cleaner than the course of a soft and sluggish brook.
Pareillement, il est bon d’auoir souuent affaire aux femmes, car cela ouure les passages, et achemine la graue et le sable. Il est bien aussi mauuais, car cela eschauffe les reins, les lasse et affoiblit. Il est bon de se baigner aux eaux chaudes, d’autant que cela relasche et amollit les lieux, où se croupit le sable et la pierre. Mauuais aussi est-il, d’autant que cette application de chaleur externe, aide les reins à cuire, durcir, et petrifier la matiere qui y est disposée. A ceux qui sont aux bains, il est plus salubre de manger peu le soir, affin que le breuuage des eaux qu’ils ont à prendre lendemain matin, face plus d’operation, rencontrant l’estomach vuide, et non empesché.
Likewise, it is good to have frequent intercourse with women, for that opens the passages and moves the gravel and sand along. It is also very bad, for it heats the kidneys, tires them and weakens them. It is good to bathe in hot springs, because that relaxes and softens the places where the sand and stone lie stagnating. It is also bad, because this application of external heat helps the kidneys bake, harden and petrify the matter lying ready in them. For those taking the waters, it is healthier to eat little in the evening, so that the water they are to drink the next morning may work better, finding the stomach empty and unencumbered.
Au rebours, il est meilleur de manger peu au disner, pour ne troubler l’operation de l’eau, qui n’est pas encore parfaite, et ne charger l’estomach si soudain, apres cet autre trauail, et pour laisser l’office de digerer, à la nuict, qui le sçait mieux faire que ne fait le iour, où le corps et l’esprit, sont en perpetuel mouuement et action. Voila comment ils vont bastelant, et baguenaudant à noz despens en tous leurs discours, et ne me sçauroient fournir proposition, à laquelle ie n’en rebastisse vne contraire, de pareille force. Qu’on ne crie donc plus apres ceux qui en ce trouble, se laissent doucement conduire à leur appetit et au conseil de Nature, et se remettent à la fortune commune.
On the contrary, it is better to eat little at the midday meal, so as not to disturb the working of the water, which is not yet complete, and not to burden the stomach so soon after that other labor, and to leave the task of digesting to the night, which does it better than the day, when body and mind are in perpetual movement and action. That is how they juggle and trifle at our expense in all their reasoning; and they could not offer me a single proposition against which I could not build a contrary one of equal force. So let no one rail any more at those who, in this confusion, let themselves be gently led by their appetite and the counsel of Nature, and commit themselves to common fortune.
Taking the waters
Montaigne’s experience of the spas of Europe: harmless, pleasant, and of uncertain effect.
I’ay veu par occasion de mes voyages, quasi tous les bains fameux de Chrestienté; et depuis quelques années ay commencé à m’en seruir. Car en general i’estime le baigner salubre, et croy que nous encourons non legeres incommoditez, en nostre santé, pour auoir perdu cette coustume, qui estoit generalement obseruée au temps passé, quasi en toutes les nations, et est encores en plusieurs, de se lauer le corps tous les iours: et ne puis pas imaginer que nous ne vaillions beaucoup moins de tenir ainsi noz membres encroustez, et noz pores estouppez de crasse.
In the course of my travels I have seen almost all the famous baths of Christendom, and for some years now I have begun to use them. For in general I consider bathing healthy, and I believe we incur no slight harm to our health from having lost this custom of washing the body every day, which was generally observed in times past in almost all nations and still is in many. And I cannot imagine that we are not much the worse for keeping our limbs encrusted like this and our pores stopped up with dirt.
Et quant à leur boisson, la Fortune a faict premierement, qu’elle ne soit aucunement ennemie de mon goust: secondement elle est naturelle et simple, qui aumoins n’est pas dangereuse, si elle est vaine. Dequoy ie prens pour respondant, cette infinité de peuples de toutes sortes et complexions, qui s’y assemble.
And as for drinking the waters, Fortune has arranged, first, that it is not at all disagreeable to my taste; second, it is natural and simple, and so at least not dangerous, even if it is useless. As guarantee of this I take the countless people of every sort and constitution who gather there.
Et encores que ie n’y aye apperceu aucun effect extraordinaire et miraculeux: ains que m’en informant vn peu plus curieusement qu’il ne se faict, i’aye trouué mal fondez et faux, tous les bruits de telles operations, qui se sement en ces lieux là, et qui s’y croyent (comme le monde va se pippant aisément de ce qu’il desire) toutesfois aussi, n’ay-ie veu guere de personnes que ces eaux ayent empiré; et ne leur peut-on sans malice refuser cela, qu’elles n’esueillent l’appetit, facilitent la digestion, et nous prestent quelque nouuelle allegresse, si on n’y va par trop abbatu de forces; ce que ie desconseille de faire.
And yet I have not noticed any extraordinary or miraculous effect there. On the contrary, inquiring into it a little more carefully than people usually do, I have found ill-founded and false all the reports of such cures that are spread about in those places and believed there (as the world easily deceives itself about what it desires). Still, I have also seen hardly anyone whom these waters have made worse; and one cannot without malice deny them this: that they awaken the appetite, aid digestion and lend us some fresh liveliness, provided one does not go there too worn down in strength, which I advise against.
Elles ne sont pas pour releuer vne poisante ruyne: elles peuuent appuyer vne inclination legere, ou prouuoir à la menace de quelque alteration. Qui n’y apporte assez d’allegresse, pour pouuoir iouyr le plaisir des compagnies qui s’y trouuent, et des promenades et exercices, à quoy nous conuie la beauté des lieux, où sont communément assises ces eaux, il perd sans doubte la meilleure piece et plus asseurée de leur effect.
They are not meant to raise up a heavy ruin; they can prop up a slight decline or ward off the threat of some disorder. Whoever does not bring enough liveliness to enjoy the pleasure of the company found there, and of the walks and exercise to which we are invited by the beauty of the places where these waters usually lie, undoubtedly loses the best and surest part of their effect.
A cette cause i’ay choisi iusques à cette heure, à m’arrester et à me seruir de celles, où il y auoit plus d’amœnité de lieu, commodité de logis, de viures et de compagnies, comme sont en France, les bains de Banieres: en la frontiere d’Allemaigne, et de Lorraine, ceux de Plombieres: en Souysse, ceux de Bade: en la Toscane, ceux de Lucques; et specialement ceux della Villa, desquels i’ay vsé plus souuent, et à diuerses saisons.
For this reason I have so far chosen to stop at and use those where there was the greatest pleasantness of setting and convenience of lodging, food and company: in France, the baths of Bagnères; on the border of Germany and Lorraine, those of Plombières; in Switzerland, those of Baden; in Tuscany, those of Lucca, and especially those at La Villa, which I have used most often and in different seasons.
Chasque nation a des opinions particulieres, touchant leur vsage, et des loix et formes de s’en seruir, toutes diuerses: et selon mon experience l’effect quasi pareil. Le boire n’est aucunement receu en Allemaigne. Pour toutes maladies, ils se baignent, et sont à grenouiller dans l’eau, quasi d’vn soleil à l’autre. En Italie, quand ils boiuent neuf iours, ils s’en baignent pour le moins trente; et communément boiuent l’eau mixtionnée d’autres drogues, pour secourir son operation. On nous ordonne icy, de nous promener pour la digerer: là on les arreste au lict, où ils l’ont prise, iusques à ce qu’ils l’ayent vuidée, leur eschauffant continuellement l’estomach, et les pieds.
Each nation has its own opinions about using them, and its own laws and ways of taking them, all different; and in my experience the effect is about the same. Drinking is not accepted at all in Germany. For every illness they bathe, and stay paddling about in the water like frogs almost from sunrise to sunset. In Italy, when they drink for nine days, they bathe for at least thirty; and they usually drink the water mixed with other drugs to assist its working. Here we are told to walk about to digest it; there they keep people in bed, where they drank it, until they have voided it, keeping their stomachs and feet continually warmed.
Comme les Allemans ont de particulier, de se faire generalement tous corneter et vantouser, auec scarification dans le bain: ainsin ont les Italiens leurs doccie, qui sont certaines gouttieres de cette eau chaude, qu’ils conduisent par des cannes, et vont baignant vne heure le matin, et autant l’apres disnée, par l’espace d’vn mois, ou la teste, ou l’estomach, ou autre partie du corps, à laquelle ils ont affaire. Il y a infinies autres differences de coustumes, en chasque contrée: ou pour mieux dire, il n’y a quasi aucune ressemblance des vnes aux autres.
Just as the Germans have the peculiarity of having themselves almost all cupped and bled, with scarification, in the bath, so the Italians have their doccie, which are certain streams of this hot water that they bring through pipes; with them, for a month, they bathe for an hour in the morning and as long in the afternoon either the head, or the stomach, or whatever other part of the body they are dealing with. There are countless other differences of custom in each region; or, to put it better, there is almost no resemblance between them.
Voylà comment cette partie de medecine, à laquelle seule ie me suis laissé aller, quoy qu’elle soit la moins artificielle, si a elle sa bonne part de la confusion et incertitude, qui se voit par tout ailleurs en cet art.
So you see how this branch of medicine, the only one I have let myself go along with, though it is the least artificial, still has its fair share of the confusion and uncertainty seen everywhere else in this art.
Les poëtes disent tout ce qu’ils veulent, auec plus d’emphase et de grace; tesmoing ces deux epigrammes. Alcon hesterno signum Iouis attigit. Ille, / Quamuis marmoreus, vim patitur medici. / Ecce hodie iussus transferri ex æde vetusta, / Effertur, quamuis sit Deus atque lapis. Et l’autre, Lotus nobiscum est, hilaris cænauit, et idem / Inuentus mane est mortuus Andragoras. / Tam subitæ mortis causam, Faustine, requiris? / In somnis medicum viderat Hermocratem. Sur quoy ie veux faire deux comtes.
The poets say whatever they please with more emphasis and grace: witness these two epigrams. Yesterday Alcon touched the statue of Jove. It, / Though marble, suffers the physician’s power. / Look: today, ordered moved from its ancient temple, / It is carried out for burial, though it is a god and a stone. And the other: Andragoras bathed with us, dined merrily, and yet / In the morning he was found dead. / You ask, Faustinus, the cause of so sudden a death? / In his sleep he had seen the doctor Hermocrates. On this subject I want to tell two stories.
Two stories
A mountain village loses its health with its first doctor, and a goat bred for its blood turns out to have stones.
Le Baron de Caupene en Chalosse, et moy, auons en commun le droit de patronage d’vn benefice, qui est de grande estenduë, au pied de noz montaignes, qui se nomme Lahontan. Il est des habitans de ce coin, ce qu’on dit de ceux de la valée d’Angrougne; ils auoient vne vie à part, les façons, les vestemens, et les mœurs à part: regis et gouuernez par certaines polices et coustumes particulieres, receuës de pere en filz, ausquelles ils s’obligeoient sans autre contrainte, que de la reuerence de leur vsage.
The Baron de Caupène in Chalosse and I share the right of patronage of a benefice of wide extent at the foot of our mountains, called Lahontan. It is with the inhabitants of this corner as is said of those of the valley of Angrogna: they had a life of their own, their own ways, dress and manners, ruled and governed by certain particular laws and customs handed down from father to son, which they bound themselves to obey with no other constraint than reverence for their own practice.
Ce petit estat s’estoit continué de toute ancienneté en vne condition si heureuse, qu’aucun iuge voisin n’auoit esté en peine de s’informer de leur affaire; aucun aduocat employé à leur donner aduis, ny estranger appellé pour esteindre leurs querelles; et n’auoit on iamais veu aucun de ce destroit à l’aumosne.
This little state had continued since time immemorial in so happy a condition that no neighboring judge had ever had to trouble himself to inquire into their business, no lawyer had been employed to advise them, no outsider called in to settle their quarrels; and no one from that district had ever been seen begging.
Ils fuyoient les alliances et le commerce de l’autre monde, pour n’alterer la pureté de leur police: iusques à ce, comme ils recitent, que l’vn d’entre eux, de la memoire de leurs peres, ayant l’ame espoinçonnée d’vne noble ambition, alla s’aduiser pour mettre son nom en credit et reputation, de faire l’vn de ses enfans maistre Iean, ou maistre Pierre: et l’ayant faict instruire à escrire en quelque ville voisine, en rendit en fin vn beau notaire de village. Cettuy-cy, deuenu grand, commença à desdaigner leurs anciennes coustumes, et à leur mettre en teste la pompe des regions de deça.
They shunned marriages and dealings with the outside world so as not to alter the purity of their way of governing themselves. Then, as they tell it, one of them, within their fathers’ memory, his soul spurred by a noble ambition, took it into his head, in order to bring his name into credit and repute, to make one of his children Master John or Master Peter; and having had him taught to write in some neighboring town, he at last made him a fine village notary. This man, once grown up, began to scorn their ancient customs and to fill their heads with the pomp of the regions on our side.
Le premier de ses comperes, à qui on escorna vne cheure, il luy conseilla d’en demander raison aux iuges Royaux d’autour de là; et de cettuy-cy à vn autre, iusques à ce qu’il eust tout abastardy. A la suitte de cette corruption, ils disent, qu’il y en suruint incontinent vn’ autre, de pire consequence, par le moyen d’vn medecin, à qui il print enuie d’espouser vne de leurs filles, et de s’habituer parmy eux.
The first of his fellow villagers who had a horn knocked off his goat, he advised to seek redress from the royal judges thereabouts; and so from one to another, until he had corrupted everything. Following this corruption, they say, another soon came of worse consequence, by means of a physician who took a fancy to marry one of their daughters and settle among them.
Cettuy-cy commença à leur apprendre premierement le nom des fiebures, des rheumes, et des apostemes, la situation du cœur, du foye, et des intestins, qui estoit vne science iusques lors tres esloignée de leur cognoissance: et au lieu de l’ail, dequoy ils auoyent apris à chasser toutes sortes de maux, pour aspres et extremes qu’ils fussent, il les accoustuma pour vne toux, ou pour vn morfondement, à prendre les mixtions estrangeres, et commença à faire trafique, non de leur santé seulement, mais aussi de leur mort.
This man began by teaching them the names of fevers, colds and abscesses, and the location of the heart, the liver and the intestines, a science until then very remote from their knowledge. And instead of garlic, with which they had learned to drive out all sorts of ills, however harsh and extreme, he got them used to taking foreign mixtures for a cough or a chill, and began to traffic not only in their health but also in their death.
Ils iurent que depuis lors seulement, ils ont apperçeu que le serain leur appesantissoit la teste, que le boire ayant chault apportoit nuisance, et que les vents de l’automne estoyent plus griefs que ceux du printemps: que depuis l’vsage de cette medecine, ils se trouuent accablez d’vne legion de maladies inaccoustumées, et qu’ils apperçoiuent vn general deschet, en leur ancienne vigueur, et leurs vies de moitié raccourcies. Voyla le premier de mes comtes.
They swear that only since then have they noticed that the evening dew made their heads heavy, that drinking when hot did harm, and that the autumn winds were more harmful than those of spring; that since they began using this medicine they find themselves overwhelmed by a legion of unaccustomed diseases, and notice a general decline in their old vigor and their lives cut short by half. That is the first of my stories.
L’autre est, qu’auant ma subiection graueleuse, oyant faire cas du sang de bouc à plusieurs, comme d’vne manne celeste enuoyée en ces derniers siecles, pour la tutelle et conseruation de la vie humaine; et en oyant parler à des gens d’entendement comme d’vne drogue admirable, et d’vne operation infaillible: moy qui ay tousiours pensé estre en bute à tous les accidens, qui peuuent toucher tout autre homme, prins plaisir en pleine santé à me prouuoir de ce miracle; et commanday chez moy qu’on me nourrist vn bouc selon la recepte. Car il faut que ce soit aux mois les plus chaleureux de l’esté, qu’on le retire: et qu’on ne luy donne à manger que des herbes aperitiues, et à boire que du vin blanc.
The other is this. Before I was subject to the gravel, I heard many people prize goat’s blood as a heavenly manna sent in these latter centuries for the protection and preservation of human life, and heard men of good understanding speak of it as an admirable drug of infallible effect. I, who have always thought myself exposed to all the accidents that can befall any other man, took pleasure, while in perfect health, in providing myself with this miracle, and ordered a goat to be raised for me at home according to the recipe. For it must be shut away in the hottest months of summer, and given nothing to eat but aperient herbs and nothing to drink but white wine.
Ie me rendis de fortune chez moy le iour qu’il deuoit estre tué: on me vint dire que mon cuysinier trouuoit dans la panse deux ou trois grosses boules, qui se chocquoient l’vne l’autre parmy sa mangeaille. Ie fus curieux de faire apporter toute cette tripaille en ma presence, et fis ouurir cette grosse et large peau: il en sortit trois gros corps, legers comme des esponges, de façon qu’il semble qu’ils soyent creuz, durs au demeurant par le dessus et fermes, bigarrez de plusieurs couleurs mortes: l’vn parfaict en rondeur, à la mesure d’vne courte boule: les autres deux, vn peu moindres, ausquels l’arrondissement est imparfaict, et semble qu’il s’y acheminast.
I happened to come home on the day it was to be killed. They came to tell me that my cook was finding in its paunch two or three large balls knocking against each other among its food. I was curious enough to have all these tripes brought before me, and had that big, broad skin opened. Out came three large bodies, light as sponges, so that they seemed hollow, but otherwise hard and firm on the surface, mottled with several dull colors: one perfectly round, the size of a ball for short bowls; the other two a little smaller, imperfectly rounded, as though they were on their way to it.
I’ai trouué, m’en estant faict enquerir à ceux, qui ont accoustumé d’ouurir de ces animaux, que c’est vn accident rare et inusité. Il est vray-semblable que ce sont des pierres cousines des nostres. Et s’il est ainsi, c’est vne esperance bien vaine aux graueleux, de tirer leur guerison du sang d’vne beste, qui s’en alloit elle mesme mourir d’vn pareil mal. Car de dire que le sang ne se sent pas de cette contagion, et n’en altere sa vertu accoustumée, il est plustost à croire, qu’il ne s’engendre rien en vn corps que par la conspiration et communication de toutes les parties: la masse agist tout’ entiere, quoy que l’vne piece y contribue plus que l’autre, selon la diuersité des operations.
Having had inquiries made of those who are used to opening up these animals, I found that it is a rare and unusual occurrence. It is likely that these are stones, cousins to ours. And if so, it is a very vain hope for sufferers from the gravel to draw their cure from the blood of a beast that was itself about to die of a similar disease. For as to saying that the blood is not touched by this contagion and does not have its usual virtue altered, it is rather to be believed that nothing is produced in a body except by the conspiracy and communication of all the parts: the mass acts as a whole, though one piece contributes more than another, according to the diversity of operations.
Parquoy il y a grande apparence qu’en toutes les parties de ce bouc, il y auoit quelque qualité petrifiante. Ce n’estoit pas tant pour la crainte de l’aduenir, et pour moy, que i’estoy curieux de cette experience: comme c’estoit, qu’il aduient chez moy, ainsi qu’en plusieurs maisons, que les femmes y font amas de telles menues drogueries, pour en secourir le peuple: vsant de mesme recepte à cinquante maladies, et de telle recepte, qu’elles ne prennent pas pour elles, et si triomphent en bons euenemens.
Therefore it is very likely that in all the parts of this goat there was some petrifying quality. It was not so much out of fear for the future, and for myself, that I was curious about this experiment, as because in my house, as in many others, the women gather a store of such petty drugs to help the common people. They use the same recipe for fifty diseases, and a recipe they do not take themselves; and yet they triumph in good results.
Au demeurant, i’honore les medecins, non pas suiuant le precepte, pour la necessité (car à ce passage on en oppose vn autre du prophete, reprenant le Roy Asa d’auoir eu recours au medecin) mais pour l’amour d’eux mesmes, en ayant veu beaucoup d’honnestes hommes et dignes d’estre aymez. Ce n’est pas à eux que i’en veux, c’est à leur art, et ne leur donne pas grand blasme de faire leur profit de nostre sottise, car la plus part du monde faict ainsi. Plusieurs vacations et moindres et plus dignes que la leur, n’ont fondement, et appuy qu’aux abuz publiques.
For the rest, I honor physicians—not according to the precept, out of necessity (for against that passage another is set, from the prophet reproving King Asa for having had recourse to the physician), but for their own sake, having seen many of them who were decent men and worthy of being loved. It is not them I have a quarrel with; it is their art. And I do not much blame them for profiting from our folly, for most of the world does the same. Many callings, both lesser and worthier than theirs, have no foundation or support but public deception.
Ie les appelle en ma compagnie, quand ie suis malade, s’ils se rencontrent à propos, et demande à en estre entretenu, et les paye comme les autres. Ie leur donne loy, de me commander de m’abrier chauldement, si ie l’ayme mieux ainsi, que d’autre sorte: ils peuuent choisir d’entre les porreaux et les laictues, dequoy il leur plaira que mon bouillon se face, et m’ordonner le blanc ou le clairet: et ainsi de toutes autres choses, qui sont indifferentes à mon appetit et vsage. I’entens bien que ce n’est rien faire pour eux, d’autant que l’aigreur et l’estrangeté sont accidens de l’essence propre de la medecine. Lycurgus ordonnoit le vin aux Spartiates malades. Pourquoy? par ce qu’ils en haissoyent l’vsage, sains.
I call them in to keep me company when I am ill, if they happen to be at hand; I ask to be entertained by them, and I pay them as others do. I give them leave to order me to cover up warmly, if I prefer that to the alternative. They can choose between leeks and lettuce for what my broth is to be made of, and prescribe white wine or claret; and so with all other things that are indifferent to my appetite and habits. I fully understand that this is doing nothing for them, since bitterness and strangeness are accidents of the very essence of medicine. Lycurgus prescribed wine for sick Spartans. Why? Because when healthy they hated drinking it.
Tout ainsi qu’vn Gentil-homme mon voisin s’en sert pour drogue tressalutaire à ses fiebures, par ce que de sa nature il en hait mortellement le goust. Combien en voyons nous d’entr’ eux, estre de mon humeur? desdaigner la medecine pour leur seruice, et prendre vne forme de vie libre, et toute contraire à celle qu’ils ordonnent à autruy? Qu’est-ce cela, si ce n’est abuser tout destroussément de nostre simplicité? Car ils n’ont pas leur vie et leur santé moins chere que nous; et accommoderoient leurs effects à leur doctrine, s’ils n’en cognoissoyent eux mesmes la faulceté.
In just the same way a gentleman, a neighbor of mine, uses it as a most beneficial drug for his fevers, because by nature he mortally hates its taste. How many of them do we see who are of my temperament? who scorn medicine for their own use, and adopt a free way of life, quite contrary to the one they prescribe for others? What is that but brazenly abusing our simplicity? For they hold their life and health no less dear than we do, and would match their actions to their doctrine if they did not themselves know its falsity.
C’est la crainte de la mort et de la douleur, l’impatience du mal, vne furieuse et indiscrete soif de la guerison, qui nous aueugle ainsi. C’est pure lascheté qui nous rend nostre croyance si molle et maniable. La plus part pourtant ne croyent pas tant, comme ils endurent et laissent faire: car ie les oy se plaindre et en parler, comme nous. Mais ils se resoluent en fin: Que feroy-ie donc? Comme si l’impatience estoit de soy quelque meilleur remede, que la patience. Y a il aucun de ceux qui se sont laissez aller à cette miserable subiection, qui ne se rende esgalement à toute sorte d’impostures?
It is fear of death and of pain, impatience with illness, a furious and reckless thirst for cure, that blinds us so. It is pure cowardice that makes our belief so soft and pliable. Most people, however, do not so much believe as endure and let things be done; for I hear them complain and talk about it as we do. But in the end they make up their minds: “What else am I to do?” As if impatience were in itself a better remedy than patience. Is there anyone who has let himself fall into this miserable subjection who does not surrender equally to every kind of imposture?
qui ne se mette à la mercy de quiconque a cette impudence, de luy donner promesse de sa guerison? Les Babyloniens portoyent leurs malades en la place: le medecin c’estoit le peuple: chacun des passants ayant par humanité et ciuilité à s’enquerir de leur estat: et, selon son experience, leur donner quelque aduis salutaire. Nous n’en faisons guere autrement: il n’est pas vne simple femmelette, de qui nous n’employons les barbottages et les breuets: et selon mon humeur, si i’auoy à en accepter quelqu’vne, i’accepterois plus volontiers cette medecine qu’aucune autre: d’autant qu’aumoins il n’y a nul dommage à craindre. Ce qu’Homere et Platon disoyent des Ægyptiens, qu’ils estoyent tous medecins, il se doit dire de tous peuples.
who does not put himself at the mercy of anyone with the impudence to promise him a cure? The Babylonians carried their sick into the public square: the physician was the people, each passer-by being bound by humanity and civility to ask about their condition and, according to his experience, give them some healthy advice. We do hardly otherwise. There is not a simple little woman whose mumbled charms and amulets we do not make use of; and to my mind, if I had to accept any medicine, I would accept this kind more willingly than any other, since at least there is no harm to fear from it. What Homer and Plato said of the Egyptians, that they were all physicians, ought to be said of every people.
Il n’est personne, qui ne se vante de quelque recepte, et qui ne la hazarde sur son voisin, s’il l’en veut croire. I’estoy l’autre iour en vne compagnie, où ie ne sçay qui, de ma confrairie, apporta la nouuelle d’vne sorte de pillules compilées de cent, et tant d’ingrediens de comte fait: il s’en esmeut vne feste et vne consolation singuliere: car quel rocher soustiendroit l’effort d’vne si nombreuse batterie? I’entens toutesfois par ceux qui l’essayerent, que la moindre petite graue ne daigna s’en esmouuoir.
There is no one who does not boast of some recipe and try it out on his neighbor, if he will believe him. The other day I was in a gathering where someone or other of my fraternity brought news of a kind of pill compounded of a hundred-odd ingredients, duly counted. It set off a celebration and a singular comfort: for what rock could withstand the force of so numerous a battery? I hear, however, from those who tried it, that not the smallest grain of gravel deigned to stir for it.
How remedies are found
Montaigne doubts that chance experiments could ever establish a reliable cure.
Ie ne me puis desprendre de ce papier, que ie n’en die encore ce mot, sur ce qu’ils nous donnent pour respondant de la certitude de leurs drogues, l’experience qu’ils ont faicte. La plus part, et ce croy-ie, plus des deux tiers des vertus medecinales, consistent en la quinte essence, ou proprieté occulte des simples; de laquelle nous ne pouuons auoir autre instruction que l’vsage. Car quinte essence, n’est autre chose qu’vne qualité, de laquelle par nostre raison nous ne sçauons trouuer la cause.
I cannot leave this paper without saying one more word about this: that as guarantee of the certainty of their drugs they offer us the experiments they have made. Most medicinal virtues, and I believe more than two-thirds of them, consist in the quintessence or occult property of medicinal plants, about which we can learn nothing except by use. For quintessence is nothing but a quality whose cause we cannot find by our reason.
En telles preuues, celles qu’ils disent auoir acquises par l’inspiration de quelque dæmon, ie suis content de les receuoir, (car quant aux miracles, ie n’y touche iamais) ou bien encore les preuues qui se tirent des choses, qui pour autre consideration tombent souuent en nostre vsage: comme si en la laine, dequoy nous auons accoustumé de nous vestir, il s’est trouué par accident, quelque occulte proprieté desiccatiue, qui guerisse les mules au talon; et si au reffort, que nous mangeons pour la nourriture, il s’est rencontré quelque operation aperitiue. Galen recite, qu’il aduint à vn ladre de receuoir guerison par le moyen du vin qu’il beut, d’autant que de fortune, vne vipere s’estoit coulée dans le vaisseau.
Among such proofs, those they say they have acquired by the inspiration of some daemon I am content to accept (for as to miracles, I never touch them); or again the proofs drawn from things that for other reasons often come into our use: as when some occult drying property is found by accident in the wool we usually wear, which cures chilblains on the heel; or when some aperient effect turns up in the horseradish we eat as food. Galen tells how a leper happened to be cured by the wine he drank, because by chance a viper had crept into the jar.
Nous trouuons en cet exemple le moyen, et vne conduitte vray-semblable à cette experience. Comme aussi en celles, ausquelles les medecins disent, auoir esté acheminez par l’exemple d’aucunes bestes. Mais en la plus part des autres experiences, à quoy ils disent auoir esté conduis par la fortune, et n’auoir eu autre guide que le hazard, ie trouue le progrez de cette information incroyable. I’imagine l’homme, regardant au tour de luy le nombre infiny des choses, plantes, animaux, metaulx. Ie ne sçay par où luy faire commencer son essay: et quand sa premiere fantasie se iettera sur la corne d’vn elan, à quoy il faut prester vne creance bien molle et aisée: il se trouue encore autant empesché en sa seconde operation.
In this example we find the means and a likely path to the discovery; as also in those to which physicians say they were led by the example of certain animals. But in most other experiments, to which they say they were led by fortune, with no other guide than chance, I find the progress of this discovery incredible. I imagine a man looking around him at the infinite number of things—plants, animals, metals. I do not know where to have him begin his trial. And when his first fancy lights on an elk’s horn, which requires a very soft and easy belief, he finds himself just as perplexed in his second step.
Il luy est proposé tant de maladies, et tant de circonstances, qu’auant qu’il soit venu à la certitude de ce poinct, où doit ioindre la perfection de son experience, le sens humain y perd son Latin: et auant qu’il ait trouué parmy cette infinité de choses, que c’est cette corne: parmy cette infinité de maladies, l’epilepsie: tant de complexions, au melancholique: tant de saisons, en hyuer: tant de nations, au François: tant d’aages, en la vieillesse: tant de mutations celestes, en la conionction de Venus et de Saturne: tant de parties du corps au doigt.
He is faced with so many diseases and so many circumstances that, before he has reached certainty on the point where his experiment must come to completion, human sense is at its wits’ end. And before he has found, among this infinity of things, that it is this horn; among this infinity of diseases, epilepsy; among so many constitutions, the melancholic; among so many seasons, winter; among so many nations, the French; among so many ages, old age; among so many celestial changes, the conjunction of Venus and Saturn; among so many parts of the body, the finger.
A tout cela n’estant guidé ny d’argument, ny de coniecture, ny d’exemple, ny d’inspiration diuine, ains du seul mouuement de la fortune, il faudroit que ce fust par vne fortune, parfaictement artificielle, reglée et methodique. Et puis, quand la guerison fut faicte, comment se peut il asseurer, que ce ne fust, que le mal estoit arriué à sa periode; ou vn effect du hazard? ou l’operation de quelque autre chose, qu’il eust ou mangé, ou beu, ou touché ce iour là? ou le merite des prieres de sa mere-grand? Dauantage, quand cette preuue auroit esté parfaicte, combien de fois fut elle reiterée? et cette longue cordée de fortunes et de rencontres, r’enfilée, pour en conclure vne regle? Quand elle sera conclue, par qui est-ce?
Since in all this he is guided neither by argument, nor conjecture, nor example, nor divine inspiration, but only by the movement of fortune, it would have to happen by a fortune perfectly skillful, regular and methodical. And then, when the cure was done, how can he be sure that it was not because the illness had reached its term? or an effect of chance? or the working of something else he had eaten, drunk or touched that day? or the merit of his grandmother’s prayers? Moreover, even if this proof had been perfect, how many times was it repeated? and this long string of chances and coincidences strung together again, to conclude a rule from it? When it is concluded, by whom?
de tant de millions, il n’y a que trois hommes qui se meslent d’enregistrer leurs experiences. Le sort aura il r’encontré à poinct nommé l’vn de ceux-cy? Quoy si vn autre, et si cent autres, ont faict des experiences contraires? A l’aduanture y verrions nous quelque lumiere, si tous les iugements, et raisonnements des hommes, nous estoyent cogneuz. Mais que trois tesmoings et trois docteurs, regentent l’humain genre, ce n’est pas la raison: il faudroit que l’humaine nature les eust deputez et choisis, et qu’ils fussent declarez nos syndics par expresse procuration.
Out of so many millions there are only three men who take the trouble to record their experiments. Will chance have hit exactly on one of these? What if another, and a hundred others, have made contrary experiments? We might perhaps see some light if all the judgments and reasonings of men were known to us. But that three witnesses and three doctors should rule the human race is not reasonable: human nature would have had to depute and choose them, and declare them our representatives by express power of attorney.
To Madame de Duras
An address to a friend: he wants his book to show him as he naturally is.
A Madame de Dvras.
To Madame de Duras.
Madame, vous me trouuastes sur ce pas dernierement, que vous me vinstes voir. Par ce qu’il pourra estre, que ces inepties se rencontreront quelque fois entre vos mains: ie veux aussi qu’elles portent tesmoignage, que l’autheur se sent bien fort honoré de la faueur que vous leur ferez. Vous y recognoistrez ce mesme port, et ce mesme air, que vous auez veu en sa conuersation. Quand i’eusse peu prendre quelque autre façon que la mienne ordinaire, et quelque autre forme plus honorable et meilleure, ie ne l’eusse pas faict: car ie ne veux tirer de ces escrits, sinon qu’ils me representent à vostre memoire, au naturel.
Madame, you found me at this very point the last time you came to see me. Since these absurdities may perhaps fall into your hands some day, I want them also to bear witness that their author feels very greatly honored by the favor you will show them. You will recognize in them the same bearing and the same air you have seen in his conversation. Even if I could have adopted some manner other than my usual one, and some other, more honorable and better form, I would not have done so; for all I want from these writings is that they bring me back to your memory as I naturally am.
Ces mesmes conditions et facultez, que vous auez pratiquées et recueillies, Madame, auec beaucoup plus d’honneur et de courtoisie qu’elles ne meritent, ie les veux loger, mais sans alteration et changement, en vn corps solide, qui puisse durer quelques années, ou quelques iours apres moy, où vous les retrouuerez, quand il vous plaira vous en refreschir la memoire, sans prendre autrement la peine de vous en souuenir: aussi ne le vallent elles pas. Ie desire que vous continuez en moy, la faueur de vostre amitié, par ces mesmes qualitez, par le moyen desquelles, elle a esté produite.
These same qualities and faculties that you have known and welcomed, Madame, with much more honor and courtesy than they deserve, I want to lodge—but without alteration or change—in a solid body that may last a few years, or a few days, after me, where you will find them again whenever you please to refresh your memory of them, without otherwise taking the trouble to remember them; nor indeed are they worth it. I wish you to continue the favor of your friendship toward me by means of the same qualities that brought it about.
Ie ne cherche aucunement qu’on m’ayme et estime mieux, mort, que viuant. L’humeur de Tybere est ridicule, et commune pourtant, qui auoit plus de soin d’estendre sa renommée à l’aduenir, qu’il n’auoit de se rendre estimable et aggreable aux hommes de son temps. Si i’estoy de ceux, à qui le monde peut deuoir loüange, ie l’en quitteroy pour la moitié, et qu’il me la payast d’auance. Qu’elle se hastast et ammoncelast tout autour de moy, plus espesse qu’alongée, plus pleine que durable. Et qu’elle s’euanouit hardiment, quand et ma cognoissance, et quand ce doux son ne touchera plus mes oreilles. Ce seroit vne sotte humeur, d’aller à cet’heure, que ie suis prest d’abandonner le commerce des hommes, me produire à eux, par vne nouuelle recommandation.
I do not in the least seek to be loved and esteemed more dead than alive. The temperament of Tiberius is ridiculous, and yet common: he cared more about extending his fame into the future than about making himself esteemed and agreeable to the men of his own time. If I were one of those to whom the world may owe praise, I would let it off for half, provided it paid me in advance. Let the praise hurry and pile up all around me, thicker rather than longer, fuller rather than lasting. And let it boldly vanish along with my awareness of it, when that sweet sound no longer reaches my ears. It would be a silly whim, now that I am about to give up the company of men, to go and present myself to them with a new recommendation.
Ie ne fay nulle recepte des biens que ie n’ay peu employer à l’vsage de ma vie. Quel que ie soye, ie le veux estre ailleurs qu’en papier. Mon art et mon industrie ont esté employez à me faire valoir moy-mesme. Mes estudes, à m’apprendre à faire, non pas à escrire. I’ay mis tous mes efforts à former ma vie. Voyla mon mestier et mon ouurage. Ie suis moins faiseur de liures, que de nulle autre besongne. I’ay desiré de la suffisance, pour le seruice de mes commoditez presentes et essentielles, non pour en faire magasin, et reserue à mes heritiers.
I set no store by goods I have not been able to put to use in my life. Whatever I am, I want to be it elsewhere than on paper. My skill and my industry have been employed in making myself worth something; my studies, in teaching me to do, not to write. I have put all my efforts into shaping my life. That is my trade and my work. I am less a maker of books than of anything else. I have wanted ability for the service of my present and essential needs, not to lay it up in store as a reserve for my heirs.
Qui a de la valeur, si le face cognoistre en ses mœurs, en ses propos ordinaires: à traicter l’amour, ou des querelles, au ieu, au lict, à la table, à la conduicte de ses affaires, à son œconomie. Ceux que ie voy faire des bons liures sous des meschantes chausses, eussent premierement faict leurs chausses, s’ils m’en eussent creu. Demandez à vn Spartiate, s’il ayme mieux estre bon rhetoricien que bon soldat: non pas moy, que bon cuisinier, si ie n’auoy qui m’en seruist. Mon Dieu, Madame, que ie haïrois vne telle recommandation, d’estre habile homme par escrit, et estre vn homme de neant, et vn sot, ailleurs.
Whoever has worth, let him show it in his conduct and his ordinary talk: in making love or in quarrels, at play, in bed, at table, in managing his affairs, in running his household. Those I see writing good books in shabby breeches would have seen to their breeches first, if they had listened to me. Ask a Spartan whether he would rather be a good rhetorician than a good soldier; ask me whether I would rather be one than a good cook, if I had no one to cook for me—I would not. My God, Madame, how I would hate such a reputation: to be an able man on paper, and a nobody and a fool everywhere else.
I’ayme mieux encore estre vn sot, et icy, et là, que d’auoir si mal choisi, où employer ma valeur. Aussi il s’en faut tant que i’attende à me faire quelque nouuel honneur par ces sottises, que ie feray beaucoup, si ie n’y en pers point, de ce peu que i’en auois aquis. Car, outre ce que cette peinture morte, et muete, desrobera à mon estre naturel, elle ne se raporte pas à mon meilleur estat, mais beaucoup descheu de ma premiere vigueur et allegresse, tirant sur le flestry et le rance. Ie suis sur le fond du vaisseau, qui sent tantost le bas et la lye.
I would still rather be a fool both here and there than have chosen so badly where to employ my worth. And so far am I from expecting to win any new honor by these follies that I shall do well if I lose none of the little I had acquired. For besides what this dead and mute painting will steal from my natural being, it does not correspond to my best condition, but to one much fallen from my former vigor and liveliness, turning withered and stale. I am at the bottom of the cask, which will soon taste of the dregs and lees.
Au demeurant, Madame, ie n’eusse pas osé remuer si hardiment les mysteres de la medecine, attendu le credit que vous et tant d’autres luy donnez, si ie n’y eusse esté acheminé par ses autheurs mesmes. Ie croy qu’ils n’en n’ont que deux anciens Latins, Pline, et Celsus. Si vous les voyez quelque iour, vous trouuerez qu’ils parlent bien plus rudement à leur art, que ie ne fay: ie ne fay que la pincer, ils l’esgorgent. Pline se mocque entre autres choses, dequoy quand ils sont au bout de leur corde, ils ont inuenté cette belle deffaite, de r’enuoyer les malades qu’ils ont agitez et tormentez pour neant, de leurs drogues et regimes, les vns, au secours des vœuz, et miracles, les autres aux eaux chaudes.
For the rest, Madame, I would not have dared stir up the mysteries of medicine so boldly, given the credit you and so many others give it, if I had not been led to it by its own authors. I believe they have only two among the ancient Latins, Pliny and Celsus. If you look at them some day, you will find that they speak much more harshly to their art than I do: I only pinch it; they cut its throat. Pliny mocks, among other things, the fine way out they have invented when they are at the end of their rope: sending the patients they have harassed and tormented for nothing with their drugs and regimens, some to the help of vows and miracles, others to the hot springs.
Ne vous courroussez pas, Madame, il ne parle pas de celles de deça, qui sont soubs la protection de vostre maison, et toutes Gramontoises. Ils ont vne tierce sorte de deffaite, pour nous chasser d’aupres d’eux, et se descharger des reproches, que nous leur pouuons faire du peu d’amendement, à noz maux, qu’ils ont eu si long temps en gouuernement, qu’il ne leur reste plus aucune inuention à nous amuser: c’est de nous enuoyer chercher la bonté de l’air de quelque autre contrée.
Do not be angry, Madame: he is not speaking of those on this side, which are under the protection of your house and all belong to the Gramonts. They have a third sort of way out, to drive us away from them and clear themselves of the reproaches we can make them for the little improvement in our ills, which they have had in their charge so long that they have no device left to keep us amused: it is to send us off to seek the good air of some other region.
Madame en voyla assez: vous me donnez bien congé de reprendre le fil de mon propos, duquel ie m’estoy destourné, pour vous entretenir.
Madame, that is enough. You will surely give me leave to pick up the thread of my subject again, which I had left in order to talk with you.
Ce fut ce me semble, Pericles, lequel estant enquis, comme il se portoit: Vous le pouuez, dit-il, iuger par là: montrant des breuets, qu’il auoit attachez au col et au bras. Il vouloit inferer, qu’il estoit bien malade, puis qu’il en estoit venu iusques-là, d’auoir recours à choses si vaines, et de s’estre laissé equipper en cette façon.
It was Pericles, I think, who, when asked how he was, said: “You can judge by this,” showing the amulets he had tied around his neck and arm. He meant that he must be very ill, since he had come to the point of turning to such empty things and letting himself be rigged out in that way.
Ie ne dy pas que ie ne puisse estre emporté vn iour à cette opinion ridicule, de remettre ma vie, et ma santé, à la mercy et gouuernement des medecins: ie pourray tomber en cette resuerie: ie ne me puis respondre de ma fermeté future: mais lors aussi si quelqu’vn s’enquiert à moy, comment ie me porte, ie luy pourray dire, comme Pericles: Vous le pouuez iuger par là, montrant ma main chargée de six dragmes d’opiate: ce sera vn bien euident signe d’vne maladie violente: i’auray mon iugement merueilleusement desmanché. Si l’impatience et la frayeur gaignent cela sur moy, on en pourra conclure vne bien aspre fiéure en mon ame.
I do not say that I may not one day be carried away into this ridiculous notion of putting my life and health at the mercy and under the rule of doctors. I may fall into that delusion; I cannot answer for my future firmness. But then, if someone asks me how I am, I too can tell him, like Pericles: “You can judge by this,” showing my hand loaded with six drams of medicinal paste. That will be a very clear sign of a violent illness: my judgment will be wonderfully unhinged. If impatience and fear win that much ground over me, people may conclude that there is a very sharp fever in my soul.
I’ay pris la peine de plaider cette cause, que i’entens assez mal, pour appuyer vn peu et conforter la propension naturelle, contre les drogues, et pratique de nostre medecine: qui s’est deriuée en moy, par mes ancestres: à fin que ce ne fust pas seulement vne inclination stupide et temeraire, et qu’elle eust vn peu plus de forme. Aussi que ceux qui me voyent si ferme contre les exhortemens et menaces, qu’on me fait, quand mes maladies me pressent, ne pensent pas que ce soit simple opiniastreté: qu’il y ait quelqu’vn si fascheux, qui iuge encore, que ce soit quelque esguillon de gloire. Ce seroit vn desir bien assené, de vouloir tirer honneur d’vne action, qui m’est commune, auec mon iardinier et mon muletier.
I have taken the trouble to plead this cause, which I understand rather poorly, in order to prop up and strengthen a little the natural bent against the drugs and practice of our medicine that has come down to me from my ancestors. I wanted it to be not merely a dull and rash inclination, but to have a little more shape. I also wanted those who see me so firm against the urgings and threats I receive when my illnesses press me hard not to think it simple obstinacy—or anyone to be so disagreeable as to judge that it is some spur of glory. That would be a fine target to aim at: to want to win honor from an action I share with my gardener and my muleteer.
Certes ie n’ay point le cœur si enflé, ny si venteux, qu’vn plaisir solide, charnu, et moëlleux, comme la santé, ie l’allasse eschanger, pour vn plaisir imaginaire, spirituel, et aëré. La gloire, voire celle des quatre fils Aymon, est trop cher achetée à vn homme de mon humeur, si elle luy couste trois bons accez de colique. La santé de par Dieu! Ceux qui ayment nostre medecine, peuuent auoir aussi leurs considerations bonnes, grandes, et fortes: ie ne hay point les fantasies contraires aux miennes.
Truly, my heart is not so puffed up or so windy that I would go and exchange a solid, fleshy, marrowy pleasure like health for an imaginary, spiritual, airy one. Glory, even the glory of the four sons of Aymon, is too dearly bought by a man of my temperament if it costs him three good bouts of colic. Health, in God’s name! Those who love our medicine may also have their own reasons, good, great and strong. I do not hate notions contrary to my own.
Il s’en faut tant que ie m’effarouche, de voir de la discordance de mes iugemens à ceux d’autruy, et que ie me rende incompatible à la société des hommes, pour estre d’autre sens et party que le mien: qu’au rebours, (comme c’est la plus generale façon que Nature aye suiuy, que la varieté, et plus aux esprits, qu’aux corps: d’autant qu’ils sont de substance plus souple et susceptible de formes) ie trouue bien plus rare, de voir conuenir nos humeurs, et nos desseins. Et ne fut iamais au monde, deux opinions pareilles, non plus que deux poils, ou deux grains. Leur plus vniuerselle qualité, c’est la diuersité.
I am so far from being startled to see my judgments at odds with other people’s, or from making myself unfit for the company of men because they hold another opinion and party than mine, that on the contrary I find it much rarer to see our temperaments and our designs agree. For variety is the most general pattern Nature has followed, and more in minds than in bodies, since minds are of a more supple substance and more receptive to forms. There never were in the world two identical opinions, any more than two hairs or two grains. Their most universal quality is diversity.