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Letter from Heraclitus CVL
Letter CVL
The Heraclitus to his friend, Amphidamus; exposing the ignorance of the physicians of his time.
The physicians (Aphidamus) have often consulted me about my temperament. But having neither art nor nature to guide them, they as often failed of giving any probable account of it. They did nothing but handle my belly, as if it had been a leathern bottle, and would have undertaken my cure, would I have but confessed to their operations before they had found out the nature of my disease. They at first betrayed their ignorance and plainly discovered they had not so much knowledge of the matter as myself, “How (quoth I) can you pretend to be professors of Nature and yet not be able to to give a tolerable guess at the malady? I shall cure myself sooner than you can. And therefore will have nothing to do with your prescriptions. I have known some cured by your recipes - this is true. But then that could only be by chance”. These doctors, Aphidamas, do very ill. For they profess an art they know nothing of, and undertake cures they do not understand, by which means they do wrong both to art and nature. It is abominable to profess ignorance, but much worse to pretend to what one is really ignorant of. What delight they take in lying? But thereby, however, they grow rich. It would have been better for them to beg for bread. Then they would be pitied. Whereas now they are hated of all men. I would give some credit to your science, if you could but show me how a drought could be made out of moisture. These were the men that killed my Uncle Heracleodorus and took money for it when they had done. They are ignorant how God cures the diseases of the world, and therefore may well mistake mine. They know not how he dissolves the dry into the moist, and then condenses the humid air. This is the cure of the fickly world, and this I will imitate. To all others I bid Farewell.
- Modernized from “A Select Collection of Letters of Antients” by M. Savage from the original Greek