TYCHIADES 
I used to visit. him previously, Philocles, whenever I had a good deal of leisure; and to-day, when I
wanted to find Leontichus, a close friend of mine, as
you know, and was told by his boy that he had gone
off to the house of Eucrates in the early morning to
pay him a call because he was ill, I went there for
two reasons, both to find Leontichus and to see
Eucrates, for I had not known that he was ill. 
I did not find Leontichus there, for he had just
gone out a little while before, they said ; but I found
plenty of others, among whom there was Cleodemus
the Peripatetic, and Deinomachus the Stoic, and Ion
—you know the one that thinks he ought to be
admired for his mastery of Plato’s doctrines as the
only person who has accurately sensed the man’s
meaning and can expound it to the rest of the world.
You see what sort of men I am naming to you, allwise and all-virtuous, the very fore-front of each
school, every one venerable, almost terrible, to look
at. In addition, the physician Antigonus was there,
called in, I suppose, by reason of the illness. Eucrates
seemed to be feeling better already, and the ailment
was of a chronic character; he had had another attack
of rheumatism in his feet.


 
 
He bade me sit by him on the couch, letting his
voice drop a little to the tone of an invalid when he
saw me, although as I was coming in I heard him
shouting and vigorously pressing some point or other.
I took very good care not to touch his feet, and
after making the customary excuses that I did not
know he was ill and that when I learned of it I
came in hot haste, sat down beside him.
 
It so happened that the company had already, I
think, talked at some length about his ailment and
were then discussing it further; they were each
suggesting certain remedies, moreover. At any rate
Cleodemus said : “Well then, if you take up from the
ground in your left hand the tooth of the weasel
which has been killed in the way I have already
described and wrap it up in the skin of a lion just
flayed, and then bind it about your legs, the pain
ceases instantly.”

 
“Not in a lion’s skin, I was told,” said Deinomachus, “but that of a hind still immature and
unmated ; and the thing is more plausible that way,
for the hind is fleet and her strength lies especially
in her legs. The lion is brave, of course, and his fat
and his right fore-paw and the stiff bristles of his
whiskers are very potent if one knew how to use
them with the incantation appropriate to each ; but
for curing the feet he is not at all promising.”
 
“I myself,” said Cleodemus, “was of that opinion
formerly, that it ought to be the skin of a hind
because the hind is fleet ; but recently a man from

 

Libya, well informed in such things, taught me
better, saying that lions were fleeter than deer.
‘No fear!’ said he: ‘They even chase and catch
them!’”

 
The company applauded, in the belief that the
Libyan was right in what he said. But I said, “Do
you really think that certain incantations put a stop to
this sort of thing, or external applications, when the
trouble has its seat within?” They laughed at my
remark andclearly held meconvicted of great stupidity
if I did not know the most obvious things, of which
nobody in his right mind would maintain that they
were not so. The doctor Antigonus, however,
seemed to me to be pleased with my question, for
he had been overlooked a long time, I suppose,
when he wanted to aid Eucrates in a professional —
way by advising him to abstain from wine, adopt a
vegetarian diet, and in general to “lower his pitch.”

 
But Cleodemus, with a faint smile, said: ‘“What
is that, Tychiades? Do you consider it incredible
that any alleviations of ailments are effected by
such means?” “TI do,’ said I, “not being altogether full of drivel, so as to believe that external
remedies which have nothing to do with the internal
causes of the ailments, applied as you say in combination with set phrases and _ hocus-pocus of
some sort, are efficacious and bring on the cure.
That could never happen, not even if you should
wrap sixteen entire weasels in the skin of the Nemean
lion; in fact I have often seen the lion himself
limping in pain with his skin intact upon him!”

 
“You are a mere layman, you see,’ said Deinomachus, “and you have not made it a point to learn

 

how such things agree with ailments when they are
applied. I do not suppose you would accept even
the most obvious instances—periodic fevers driven
off, snakes charmed, swellings cured, and whatever
else even old wives do. But if all that takes
place, why in the world will you not believe that
this takes place by similar means?”
 
“You are reasoning from false premises, Deinomachus,” I replied, “and, as the saying goes, driving.
out one nail with another; for it is not clear that
precisely what you are speaking of takes place by
the aid of any such power. If, then, you do not
first convince me by logical proof that it takes place
in this way naturally, because the fever or the inflammation is afraid of a holy name or a foreign phrase
and so takes flight from the swelling, your stories
still remain old wives’ fables.”

 

“It seems to me,” said Deinomachus, “that when
you talk like that you do not believe in the gods,
either, since you do not think that cures can be
effected through holy names.’ “Don’t say that, my
dear sir!” I replied. “Even though the gods exist,
there is nothing to prevent that sort of thing from
being false just the same. For my part, I revere the
gods and I see their cures and all the good that
they do by restoring the sick to health with drugs
and doctoring. In fact, Asclepius himself and his
sons ministered to the sick by laying on healing
drugs, not by fastening on lions’ skins and weasels.” Iliad4, 218; 11, 830.