Early determination ofthe patient’s —since only what has actually been administered will benefit; emphatic assertion is of no use—is beneficial but complicated. For it is through many turns and changes that all diseases settle into some sort of permanence.Because changes and turns are common in the early stages, to fix the proper treatment early is a complicated matter.

This piece of advice also will need our consideration, as it contributes somewhat to the whole. For should you begin by discussing fees, you will suggest to the patient either that you will go away and leave him if no agreement be reached, or that you will neglect him and not prescribe any immediate treatment. So one must not be anxious about fixing a fee. For I consider such a worry to be harmful to a troubled patient, particularly if the disease be acute. For the quickness of the disease, offering no opportunity for turning back,I. e. from missed opportunities that have passed away while haggling over fees. It is possible that ἀναστροφή has here the sense of ἀναστρέφειν καρίδαν in Thucydides II. 49, to upset. An acute disease is not the time to upset a patient with financial worries. spurs on the good physician not to seek his profit but rather to lay hold on reputation. Therefore it is better to reproach a patient you have saved than to extort money fromOr, if Coray’s emendation be adopted, to tease. those who are at death’s door.

And yet some patients ask for what is out of the way and doubtful, through prejudice, deserving indeed to be disregarded, but not to be punished. Wherefore you must reasonably oppose them, as they are embarked upon a stormy sea of change. For, in heaven’s name, who that is a brotherlyThe word so translated is fairly common in the Corpus in the sense of related. Here it evidently means a loyal member of the family of physicians. physician practises with such hardness of heart as not at the beginning to conduct a preliminary examination of every illnessWith Ermerins’ reading, all the illness. and prescribe what will help towards a cure, to heal the patient and not to overlook the reward, to say nothing of the desire that makes a man ready to learn?

I urge you not to be too unkind, but to consider carefully your patient’s superabundance or means. Sometimes give your services for nothing, calling to mind a previous benefaction or present satisfaction.Or, with εὐδοκιμίην, your present reputation. And if there be an opportunity of serving one who is a stranger in financial straits, give full assistance to all such. For where there is love of man, there is also love of the art. For some patients, though conscious that their condition is perilous, recover their health simply through their contentment with the goodness of the physician. And it is well to superintend the sick to make them well, to care for the healthy to keep them well, but also to care for one’s own self, so as to observe what is seemly.