MONSIEUR DE POURCEAUGNAC
A monologue from the
play by Molière
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from The Dramatic Works of Molière, Vol. III. Ed.
Charles Heron Wall. London: George Bell & Sons, 1891. |
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2ND PHYSICIAN: Heaven forbid, Sir, that it should enter
my thoughts to add anything to what you have just been saying!
You have discoursed too well on all the signs, symptoms, and
causes of this gentleman's disease. The arguments you have used
are so learned and so delicate that it is impossible for him
not to be mad and hypochondriacally melancholic; or, were he
not, that he ought to become so, because of the beauty of the
things you have spoken, and of the justness of your reasoning.
Yes, Sir, you have graphically depicted, graphice depinxisti,
everything that appertains to this disease. Nothing can be more
learnedly, judiciously, and ingeniously conceived, thought, imagined,
than what you have delivered on the subject of this desease,
either as regards the diagnostic, the prognostic, or the therapeutic;
and nothing remains for me to do but to congratulate this gentleman
upon falling into your hands, and to tell him that he is but
too fortunate to be mad, in order to experience the gentle efficacy
of the remedies you have so judiciously proposed. I approve them
in toto, manibus et pedibus descendo in tuam sententiam.
All I should like to add is to let all his bleedings and purging
be of an odd number, numero deus impare gaudet, to take
the whey before the bath, and to make him a forehead plaster,
in the composition of which there should be salt--salt is a symbol
of wisdom; to whitewash the walls of his room, to dissipate the
gloominess of his mind; album est disgregativum visas;
and to give him a little injection immediately, to serve as a
prelude and introduction to those judicious remedies, from which,
if he is curable, he must receive relief. Heaven grant that these
remedies, which are yours, Sir, may succeed with the patient
according to our wish!
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