19. Formula of the Count of the Chief Physicians.

Comes Archiatrorum.

'The doctor helps us when all other helpers seem to fail. By his art he finds out things about a man of which he himself is ignorant; and his prognosis of a case, though founded on reason, seems to the ignorant like prophecy.

'It is disgraceful that there should be a president of the lascivious pleasures of the people (Tribunus Voluptatum) and none of this healing art. Excellent too may your office be in enabling you to control the squabbles of the doctors. They ought not to quarrel. At the beginning of their exercise of their art they take a sort of priestly oath to hate wickedness and to love purity. Take then this rank of Comes Archiatrorum, and have the distinguished honour of presiding over so many skilled practitioners and of moderating their disputes.

'Leave it to clumsy men to ask their patients "if they have had good sleep; if the pain has left them." Do you rather incline the patient to ask you about his own malady, showing him that you know more about it than he does. The patient's pulse, the patient's water, tell to a skilled physician the whole story of his disease.

'Enter our palace unbidden; command us, whom all other men obey; weary us if you will with fasting, and make us do the very opposite of that which we desire, since all this is your prerogative.'