Aesculapius' advice

Founded: Anonymous German.
sourceLeon Cechini, Augusto. Ética en medicina (foreword by Rafael Risquez-Iribarren).
Barcelona: publishing house Científico-Médica, 1973; 465, pp. 36-38.
Date: 18th-19th century.
Revision of the Spanish translation: Gonzalo Herranz.
Copyright of the Spanish version: Gonzalo Herranz.
Checked on 30 May 2007.

Do you want to be a doctor, my son? This is the aspiration of a generous soul, of a spirit eager for science. You want men to think of you as a god who alleviates their ills and drives away their fear. But have you thought about what your life is going to be like?

You will have to give up your private life: while most citizens can, when they have finished their work, isolate themselves far from the unwelcome, your door will always be open to everyone. At all hours of the day and night they will come to disturb your rest, your hobbies, your meditation; you will no longer have hours to devote to your family, to friendship, to study. You will no longer belong to yourself.

The poor, accustomed to suffering, will call you only in case of emergency. But the rich will treat you as a slave to remedy their excesses: whether they have indigestion or a cold, they will make you wake you up in a hurry as soon as they feel the slightest discomfort. You will be very interested in the most vulgar details of their existence; you will have to tell them whether they are to eat veal or chicken breast, whether they should walk this way or that way when they go for a walk. You will not be able to go to the theatre, nor be ill: you must always be ready to go as soon as your master calls you.

You were severe in your choice of friends. You sought the attention of men of talent, of delicate souls, of witty conversationalists. Henceforth, you will not be able to discard the heavy, the short-witted, the haughty, the contemptible. The wrongdoer will have as much right to your attendance as the honourable man: you will prolong nefarious lives, and the secrecy of your profession will forbid you to prevent or denounce unworthy actions of which you will be a witness.

You firmly believe that by honest work and attentive study you can win a reputation: be aware that you will be judged, not by your science, but by the coincidences of fate, by the cut of your coat, by the appearance of your house, by the issue of your servants, by the attention you devote to the chatter and tastes of your customers. Some will distrust you if you don't wear a beard, others if you don't come from Asia, others if you believe in the gods, others if you don't believe in them.

You like simplicity: you will have to adopt the attitude of an augur. You are active, you know what time is worth. You will not be able to show annoyance or impatience: you will have to listen to stories that go back to the beginning of time when someone wants to tell you the story of their constipation. Idlers will come to see you for the simple pleasure of chatting: you will be the dumping ground for their petty vanities.

Although medicine is an obscure science, which, thanks to the efforts of its faithful, is gradually becoming more and more enlightened, you are never allowed to doubt, on pain of losing your credit . If you do not affirm that you know the nature of the disease, that you possess, to cure it, a remedy that does not fail, the vulgar will go to charlatans who sell the lie they need.

Do not count on the gratitude of your sick. When they heal, the cure is due to their strength; if they die, it is you who have killed them. While they are in danger, they treat you like a god: they beseech you, they promise you, they shower you with flattery. As soon as they begin to convalesce, you are already in their way. When you talk to them about repaying the care you have lavished on them, they get angry and denigrate you. The more selfish men are, the more application they demand.

Don't count on this hard official document to make you rich. I assure you: it is a priesthood, and it would not be decent for you to earn as much as an oilman or a politician.

I pity you if you are attracted to what is beautiful: you will see the ugliest and most disgusting thing in the human species. All your senses will be abused. You will have to press your ear against the sweat of dirty breasts, breathe in the odour of squalid dwellings, the over-heated perfumes of courtesans; you will have to feel tumours, cure sores green with pus, contemplate urine, scrutinise spittle, fix your eyes and your nose on filth, stick your finger in many places. How often, on a fine, sunny day, coming out of a banquet or a Sophoclean performance, will you be called to see a man who, troubled by belly-aches, will present you with a nauseous bedpan, saying to you with satisfaction: Thank you that I have taken care not to throw it away. Then remember to be grateful for it and to show all your interest in that bowel movement.

Even the very beauty of women, the comfort of man, will fade for you. You will see them in the morning, dishevelled, dishevelled, devoid of their beautiful colours, part of their attractiveness forgotten by the furniture. They will cease to be goddesses and become afflicted beings of graceless misery. You will only feel pity for them.

The world will seem to you like a vast hospital, an assembly of complaining individuals. Your life will be spent in the shadow of death, amidst the pain of bodies and souls, seeing at times the mourning of one who is shattered by the loss of his father, and at others the hypocrisy that, at the bedside of the dying, makes calculations about inheritance.

When at the cost of much effort you have prolonged the existence of a few old men or weak and deformed children, there will come a war that will destroy the healthiest in the city. Then you will be commissioned to separate the less gifted from the more robust, to save the weak and send the strong to their death.

Think it over while there is still time. But if, indifferent to fortune, to pleasures, to ingratitude; if, knowing that you will often find yourself alone among human beasts, you have a soul stoic enough to be satisfied with duty done, if you think yourself sufficiently paid with the happiness of a mother who has just given birth, with a face that smiles because the pain has been relieved, with the peace of a dying man whom you accompany to the end, then become a doctor, my son; if you long to know man and to penetrate the tragic grandeur of his destiny, then become a doctor, my son.