Historical Physicks: Medical Practitioners
As published in the Herald, November 2002
There was a Medical Practitioner:
Nowhere a better expositioner
On points of medicine and pathology.
For he was grounded in astrology;
Treating his patients with most modern physic
Dependent on his skill in natural magic;
He knew which times would be the most propitious
For all his cures to be most expeditious.
He knew the cause of every malady,
If it was hot or cold or moist or dry
And where its seat and what its composition:
You'd nowhere find a more adept physician.
And when he knew the cause of the disease
He'd give the patient fitting remedies.
He'd several chemists under his command
Who made sure all his treatments were to hand.
Reciprocally, both parties made their pile
And had done so for quite a longish while.
Old eminent authorities he knew,
Some Greek, some Roman, some Arabian too.
He'd read both Aesculapius the Greek
And Dioscorides, whose drug critique
Was current still. Ephesian Rufus, too,
Hippocrates and Haly, all he knew.
Galen, Serapion and Rhazes, all
Their textbooks he could instantly recall.
Likewise with Avicenna, Averoes,
Damascan John and Constantine, and those
Like Bernard, John of Gaddesden, (just dead
And gone), and Gilbert; every one he'd read.
He was abstemious in what he ate;
Though this seemed little, it was adequate
And most nutritious and digestible.
He never bothered much about the Bible.
Of blue and scarlet cloth his cloak was made
With silken lining of a different shade.
But yet in spending money he seemed meagre,
To keep the fees he earned he seemed most eager;
For gold's a sovereign tonic; so, in short,
Great stores of gold were what he chiefly sought.
Chaucer’s description of a doctor, from the Canterbury Tales

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