Precepts (6-10)

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.[*] 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.

Now those who are buried in deep ignorance of the art cannot appreciate what has been said. In fact such men will be shown up as ignorant of

So much for such recommendations. For remission and aggravation of a disease require respectively less or more medical assistance. A physician does not violate etiquette even if, being in difficulties on occasion over a patient and in the dark through inexperience, he should urge the calling in of others, in order to learn by consultation the truth about the case, and in order that there may be fellow-workers to afford abundant help. For when a diseased condition is stubborn and the evil grows, in the perplexity of the moment most things go wrong. So on such occasions one must be bold.[*] For never will I lay it down that the art has been

With all these things it will appear strong evidence for the reality of the art if a physician, while skilfully treating the patient, does not refrain from exhortations not to worry in mind in the eagerness to reach the hour of recovery. For we physicians take the lead in what is necessary for health. And if he be under orders the patient will not go far astray. For left to themselves patients sink through their painful condition, give up the struggle and depart this life. But he who has taken the sick man in hand, if he display the discoveries of the art, preserving nature, not trying to alter it, will sweep away the present depression or the distrust of the moment. For the healthy condition of a human being is a nature that has naturally attained a movement, not alien but perfectly adapted, having

You must also avoid adopting, in order to gain a patient,[*] luxurious headgear and elaborate perfume. For excess of strangeness will win you ill-repute, but a little will be considered in good taste, just as pain in one part is a trifle, while in every part it is serious. Yet I do not forbid your trying to please, for it is not unworthy of a physician’s dignity.