Plate 20

"The Physician"

Moriae Encomium

Illustrated by Hans Holbein the Younger

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Holbein's illustration shown in Plate 20 from Moriae Encomium is associated with the following text drawn from

John Wilson's 1668 translation:

But the purity of the golden age declining by degrees, first, as I said before, arts were invented

by the evil genii; and yet but few, and those too received by fewer. After that the Chaldean

superstition and Greek newfangledness, that had little to do, added I know not how many

more; mere torments of wit, and that so great that even grammar alone is work enough for

any man for his whole life.

Though yet among these sciences those only are in esteem that come nearest to common

sense, that is to say, folly. Divines are half starved, naturalists out of heart, astrologers laughed

at, and logicians slighted; only the physician is worth all the rest. And among them too, the

more unlearned, impudent, or unadvised he is, the more he is esteemed, even among princes.

For physic, especially as it is now professed by most men, is nothing but a branch of flattery,

no less than rhetoric.

The associated French text from L'Eloge de la Folie (1728) follows:

Tel étroit le Siecle d'or. Les hommes perdant peu à peu cette heureuse innocence, les Génies,

comme j'ai dit, inventerent les Arts, mais en petit nombre, & qui furent reçus de peu de gens.

Dans la suite, les Chaldéens, par leur superstition, & les Grecs, par leur oisive legereté, en

trouverent mille autres, tous admirables pour tourmenter l'esprit; la Grammaire seule étrant

plus que sussisante, pour faire passer toute la vie dans la torture. De tous ces Arts, on estime

davantage ceux qui approchent le plus de sens-commun, c'est à dire, felon moi, de la folie.

Mais de quel rapport sont ils? Les entrailles des Théologiens crient famine, les Physiciens se

morfondent, on se moque des Astrologues, on méprise les Dialecticiens: il n'y a que le

Medecin; celui-là fait autant lui seul, que tous les autres ensemble. D'ailleurs, cette profession

de Medecine a un grand avantage; c'est que, plus celui la pratique est ignorant, hardi,

témeraire, plus il est estimé des Grands. J'ajoute, que la Medecine, principalement de la

maniere qu'on l'exerce aurjour-d'hui, n'est qu'une portion de le Flaterie' ce qui lui est

assurément communavec la Rhétorique.