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A son who had been disowned studied medicine. When his father became insane and had been given up by the other doctors, he cured him by administering a remedy, and was again received into the family. After that, he was ordered to cure his stepmother, who was insane, and as he refused to do so, he is now being disowned again.

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There is nothing novel or surprising, gentlemen of the jury, in my father’s present course, and this is not the first time that he has displayed such anger; on the contrary, he keeps this law always in readiness and resorts to this court by habit.

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, There is, however, something of novelty in my present plight, in that I am under no personal charge, but am in jeopardy of punishment on behalf of my profession because it cannot in every particular obey his behests. But what could be more absurd than to give treatment under orders, in accordance, not with the powers of the profession, but with the desires of my father? I could wish, to be sure, that medical science had a remedy

of such sort that it could check not only insanity but unjust anger, in order that I might cure my father of this disorder also. As things are, his madness has been completely assuaged, but his anger is growing worse, and (what is hardest of all) he is sane to everyone else and insane towards me alone, his physician. You see, therefore, what fee I receive for my attendance—I am disowned by him once more and put away from my family a second time, as if I had been taken back for a brief space merely that I might be more disgraced by being turned out of the household repeatedly.

For my part, in cases which can be cured I do not wait to be summoned; on the previous occasion, for instance, I came to his relief uncalled. But when a case is perfectly desperate, I am unwilling even to essay it. And in respect to this woman I am with good reason even less venturesome, since I take into consideration how I should be treated by my father if I were to fail, when without having so much as begun treating her I am disowned. I am indeed pained, gentlemen of the jury, at my stepmother’s serious condition (for she was a good woman), at my father’s distress on her account, and most of all at my own apparent disobedience and real inabilit to do the'service which is enjoined upon me, bot because of the extraordinary violence of the illness and the ineffectiveness of the art of healing. I do not think, however, that it is just to disown a man who declines at the outset to promise what he cannot perform.

The charges on which he disowned me before can be readily understood from the present situation. To those charges I have made a sufficient answer, I think, by my subsequent life, and these accusations which he now brings I shall dispose of to the best of my ability; but first I shall tell you a little about my position. I who am so difficult and disobedient, who so disgrace my father and act so unworthily of my family, on the former occasion thought it behoved me to make little opposition to him when he was making all that clamour and straining his lungs. On leaving the house, I expected to have a grand jury and a true verdict in my subsequent life, with its disclosure that I was at a very great remove from those offences with which I had been charged by my father, that I had devoted myself to the noblest of pursuits, and that I was frequenting the best company. I foresaw, too, something like this, suspecting even then that it indicated no great sanity in a father to be angry unjustly and to concoct false accusations against a son. And there were those who held all that to be the beginning of madness, the hostile demonstration and skirmish-fire of the disease that was soon to fall upon him—the insensate hatred, the cruel law, the ready abusiveness, the grim tribunal, the clamour, the anger, and in general the atrabiliousness which impregnated the whole proceedings. Therefore I expected that perhaps I should some day need a knowledge of medicine.

I went abroad, then, studied with the most famous physicians in foreign parts, and by dint of great labour and insistent zeal thoroughly mastered the art. On my return I found my father by then defin- itively insane and given up by the local physicians, who had not profound insight and could not accurately distinguish different forms of disease. Yet I did as was natural for an uprigne son to do, neither cherishing a grudge because of my being disowned, nor waiting to be sent after; for I had no fault to find with him personally, but all those offences were of extraneous origin and, as I have said already, peculiar to the disease. So I came without being called, but did not begin the treatment at once. It is not our custom to do so, and the art of medicine does not recommend that course; we are taught first of all to observe whether the disease is curable or irremediable and beyond the limits of medical skill. Then, if it is manageable, we put our hands to it and make every effort to save the patient; but if we see that the ailment already has the upper hand and is victorious, we do not touch it at all, observing an ancient law of the progenitors of the art of medicine, who say that one must not lay hand to those who are overmastered.Hippocrates, de Arte, 3. Since I saw that my father was still within hope and his ailment not beyond professional skill, after long observation and accurate investigation of all details I set my hand to it at last and compounded my remedy confidently, although many of those present were suspicious of my prescription, critical of my treatment of the case, and ready to bring charges against me.

My stepmother was present also, panic-stricken and distrustful, not because she hated me but because she was fearful and well aware that he was in a bad way; she knew it because she alone associated exclusively with him and lived side by side with his disorder. Nevertheless, without any timidity (for I knew that the symptoms would not cheat me or betray the profession) I applied the treatment at the nick of time for the attempt, although some of my friends advised me not to be overbold for fear that failure bring upon me a more serious imputation of avenging myself upon my father with poison, having conceived a grudge against him for what I had suffered at his hands. To sum it up, he became well at once, recovered his sanity, and was thoroughly in command of his faculties. Those present were amazed, and my stepmother was full of praise, making it plain to all that she was delighted with my success and his sanity. And as for my father here (for I am able to testify on his behalf) without delay and without asking any advice in this matter, as soon as he had heard the whole story from those who were there, he annulled the disownment and made me his son once more, calling me his saviour and benefactor, admitting that he had tested me thoroughly, and defending himself for his former charges. This event gave joy to many, the men of rectitude who were there, and pain to those who preferred the disownment of a son to his resumption. I saw, anyhow, at the time that not all were equally pleased with the affair, but at once one or another showed changed colour, disturbed eyes, and an angry face, such as comes from jealousy and hatred. Well, we were rejoicing and making merry, as was natural, since we had regained each other,

when after a short time my stepmother suddenly began to be afflicted, gentlemen of the jury, with an ailment which was severe and unusual. I observed the affliction constantly from the moment when it began, Her form of insanity was not simple or superficial; some trouble of long ago, lurking in the soul, had broken out and won its way into the open. We have, of course, many symptoms of incurable madness, but in the case of this woman I have observed one that is novel; towards everyone else she is very civil and gentle, and in their presence the disease is peaceful, but if she sees any physician and simply hears that he is one, she is beyond all things exasperated against him, and this in itself is proof that her condition is bad and incurable. Seeing this, I was distressed and pitied the woman, who was worthy of it and unfortunate beyond her deserts.

My father, in his inexperience (for he does not know either the origin of the trouble that holds her in its grip, or its cause, or the extent of the infirmity), bade me treat her and give her the same medicine; for he thinks that madness has but one form, that the ailment is simple, and that her illness is identical with his, permitting the same treatment. When I say what is as true as true can be, that it is impossible to save his wife and confess that I am worsted by the disorder, he is indignant and angry, and says that I am deliberately shirking and giving the woman up, thus making the ineffectiveness of the art of medicine a reproach against me. He does, indeed, what is habitually done by people who are offended; all are angry at those who speak the truth in frankness. In spite of that, I shall plead to the best of my ability against him, not only for myself but for my art.

First, I shall begin with the law under which he wishes to disown me, in order that he may discover that his power is now no longer what it was before. The lawgiver, father,has not permitted all to exercise the privilege of disownment, or upon all sons, or as often as they choose, or upon all manner of grounds. On the contrary, just as he has conceded to fathers the right to exercise such anger, just so he has made provision in behalf of sons, that they may not suffer it unjustly; and for that reason he has not allowed the punishment to be inflicted freely or without trial, but has ordered men to be summoned to court and empanelled as investigators who will not be influenced either by anger or by malice in determining what is just. For he knew that many people on many occasions are obsessed by senseless reasons for anger; that one believes a malicious falsehood, while another relies upon a servant or an unfriendly female. It was not his idea, therefore, that the thing should go untried or that sons should at once lose their case by default. Water is measured,

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a hearing is given, and nothing is left uninvestigated.

Accordingly, since it is within your powers, since my father controls only the charge, and you who sit in judgement control the decision whether his accusation is reasonable, do not yet consider his specific allegation against me and the ground of his present indignation, but first examine that other point, whether he should still be allowed to disown a son when, after once for all disowning him, using the privilege that derives from the law and exercising to the full this paternal suzerainty, he has subsequently taken him back again and annulled the disownment. I say that such a thing is most unjust—for punishments, precisely in the case of children, to be interminable, their condemnations numerous, and their fear eternal; for the law at one moment to share the prosecutor’s anger, only soon afterward to relax, and then again to be as severe as before; in a word, for justice to be altered this way and that to conform to the momentary opinion of fathers. No, the first time it is right to give the parent free rein, to share his anger with him, to make him arbiter of the punishment; but if, once for all, he expends his privilege, makes full use of the law, satisfies his anger, and then afterwards takes back his son, persuaded that he deserves it, he must abide by it, and not keep shifting, changing his mind, and altering his decision. When that son was born there was no way, of course, to ascertain whether he would turn out to be bad or good, and on that account the privilege of repudiating children who are unworthy of their family has been allowed to their parents, since they determined to bring them up at a time when they were unaware ofthis.

When, however, under no constraint but able to do as he pleases, a man himself, of his own motion and after putting his son to the test, takes him back, what pretext for change of mind remains, or what further recourse to the law? The legislator would say to you: “If he was bad and deserved to be disowned, what made you ask him back? Why did you readmit him to your house? Why did you nullify the law? You were free and at liberty not to do this. Surely it cannot be conceded that you should make sport of the laws and that the courts should be convened to suit your changes of mind, that the laws should be relaxed one moment and enforced the next and the jurors sit to register, or rather to execute, your decisions, inflicting a penalty at one time, bringing you together at another, as often as it shall please you. You begat him once for all, you brought him up once for all, and have once for all, in return for this, the power to disown him, and then only if you are held to be doing it justly. This persistence, this interminability, this prodigious casualness is beyond the legal right of a father.”

In Heaven’s name, gentlemen of the jury, do not permit him, once he has effected the reinstatement of his own free will, set aside the decision of the former court, and nullified his anger, to reinvoke the same penalty and to recur to the right of a father when its term by now is over and done with, inoperative in his case alone because it is already used up. You perceive, surely, that in all courts where jurors are drawn by lot, if a man thinks that the verdict is unjust, the law allows him to appeal from them to another tribunal; but if people have themselves of their own accord agreed upon jurors and willingly committed the arbitrament to them, that is not then the case. For there was no need to consult them at all; but if a man has selected them of his own choice, he ought to remain content with their decision. So it is with you: a son who seemed to you unworthy of his lineage need never have been taken back, but one whom you have pronounced good and taken back again you will not thereafter be able to disown; for you yourself have borne witness that he does not deserve to undergo this again, and have acknowledged that he is good. It is fitting, therefore, that his reinstatement should be irrevocable and the reconciliation binding after deliberation so oft-repeated, and two sessions of court, one (the first) in which you repudiated him, the other (your own) when you changed your mind and undid it. By setting aside the earlier decision you have guaranteed your later determination. Abide, then, by your latest purpose and maintain your own verdict; you must be a father, for that is what you decided, what you approved, what you ratified.

Even if I were not your own son, but adopted, and you wished to disown me, I should not think you could; for what it was possible not to do at all, it is unjust to undo once it has taken place. But when a son has been got by birth, and then again by choice and decision, how is it reasonable to put him away again and deprive him repeatedly of that single relationship? If I happened to be a slave, and at first, thinking me vicious, you had put me in irons, but on becoming convinced that I was not a wrongdoer you had let me go and set me free, would it be in your power, if you became angry on occasion, to bring me back into the same condition of slavery? By no means, for the laws require that such pacts should be permanent and under all circumstances valid. Upon the point that it is no longer in his power to disown one whom he has once disowned and then of his own accord taken back I still have much to say; nevertheless, I shall make an end.

But consider what manner of man he will now be disowning. I do not mean that then I was but a layman, whereas now I am a physician, for my profession would avail me nothing in this respect. Nor that then I was young, whereas now I am well on in years and derive from my age the right to have it believed that I would do no wrong; for that too is perhaps trivial. But at that time, even if he had suffered no wrong, as I should maintain, yet he had received no benefit from me when he excluded me from the house; whereas now I have recently been his saviour and benefactor. What could be more ungrateful than that, after he had been saved through me and had escaped so great a danger, he should at once make return in this way, taking no account of that cure; nay, should so easily forget and try to drive into loneliness a man who, when he might justly have exulted over those who had unjustly cast him out, not only had borne him no grudge but actually had saved his life and made him sound of mind?

It is no trifling or commonplace benefit, gentlemen of the jury, that I have conferred upon him; and yet I am accounted worthy of treatment like this. Although he himself does not know what happened then, you all know how he acted and felt and what his condition was when, taking him in hand after the other doctors had given up, while the members of the family were avoiding him and not venturing even to approach him, I made him what you see him, so that he is able to bring charges and argue about the laws. Stay! you can see your counterpart, father; you were nearly as your wife is now, when I brought you back to your former sanity. Truly it is not just that I should receive such a recompense for it, or that you should employ your reason only against me. That I have done you no little good is clear from the very charges which you bring; you hate me because I do not cure your wife when she is at the end of everything and in an utterly wretched plight. Since I freed you from a similar condition, why are you not far rather overjoyed and thankful to have been liberated from a state so terrible? Instead, and it is most ungrateful—you no sooner recover your sanity than you bring me to court and after your life has been saved, seek to punish me, reverting to that old-time hatred and citing the self-same law. It is a handsome fee, in truth, that you pay in this manner to the art of healing, and a fitting price for your medicines, to employ your sanity only to attack your physician!

Will you, gentlemen of the jury, empower this man to punish his benefactor, to banish his saviour, to hate the one who made him sane, to take vengeance on the one who set him on his feet? Not if you do what is just. For if I were really now guilty of the greatest offences, there was no slight gratitude owing me previously; keeping this in sight and in mind, he would have done well to ignore the present and to be prompt to forgive for the sake of the past, especially if the benefaction were so great as to overtop everything subsequent. That, I think, is true of mine toward this man, whom I saved, who is my debtor for the whole of his life, to whom I have given existence, sanity, and intelligence, and that at a time when all the others had finally given up and were confessing themselves defeated by the malady.

My benefaction, I think, is the greater because, although I was not his son at that time and had no imperative reason to take the case but was free and independent, having been released from the responsibility imposed by nature, nevertheless I was not indifferent but came voluntarily, unsummoned, on my own initiative; I gave my assistance, lavished my attentions, brought about a cure, and set my father on his feet, preserving him for myself, pleading my own cause against his disownment, stilling his anger by my friendliness, annulling the law by my love, purchasing by a great benefaction my reentrance into the family, demonstrating my loyalty to my father at a crisis so dangerous, bringing about my own adoption with the help of my profession, and proving myself a legitimate son in his time of dire need. What do you suppose my sufferings were, what my exertions, to be with him, to wait upon him, to watch my opportunity, now yielding to the full force of the ailment, now bringing my professional skill to bear when the disorder abated a little? And truly, of all these duties that are included in medical science, the most dangerous is to treat such patients and to approach people in that condition, for often they loose their frenzy upon those who are near them, when their ailment has become severe. And yet none of these considerations made me hesitant or faint-hearted. I joined battle with the disease and measured myself against it in every way, and so at last prevailed by means of my remedy.

Let no one, hearing this, be quick to remark: “What sort of feat is it, and how great, to give a remedy?”’ Many things must precede this; one must prepare the way for the medicine, make the body easy to cure, and take thought for the patient’s whole condition, purging him, reducing him, nourishing him with the proper foods, rousing him as much as is expedient, planning for periods of sleep, contriving periods of solitude. Those who have any other sickness can readily be persuaded to consent to all this, but the insane because of their independence of spirit are hard to influence and hard to direct, dangerous to the physician, and hard to conquer by the treatment. Often when we think we are near the goal at last and become hopeful, some trivial slip, occurring when the illness has reached its height, easily overturns everything that has been done, hampers the treatment, and thwarts our skill.

When a man has endured all this, has wrestled with an illness so serious, and has conquered the ailment of all ailments most difficult to master, will you empower the plaintiff to disown him again, permit him to interpret the laws in any way he will against a benefactor, and allow him to fight with nature? I, obeying nature, save and preserve my father for my own sake, gentlemen of the jury, even if he wrongs me; but that father, following, he says, the laws, ruins the son that has done him a benefit, and deprives him of his family. He is his son’s enemy, I am my father’s friend. I cherish nature, he slights and insults her just claims. To think of a father who hates his son unjustly! To think of a son that loves his father still more unjustly! For I bring it as a charge against myself, since my father constrains me to do so, that I who am hated love when I should not and love more than I ought. Yet it is nature’s behest that fathers love their sons more than sons their fathers. He, however, deliberately slights even the laws, which preserve for the family sons who have done no wrong, as well as nature, who draws parents into great affection for their children. It cannot be said that, having exceptional grounds for good-will towards me, he pays me exceptional dues of good-will and runs the measure over, or that at least he imitates and rivals me in my love; no, alas! he even hates one who loves him, repels one who cherishes him, injures one who helps him, and disowns one who clings to him. Aye, though the laws are kindly to children, he employs them against me as if they were unkindly. Ah, what a conflict you wish to precipitate, father, between the laws and nature!

Truly, truly, this matter is not as you will have it tobe. Youillinterpret the laws, father, for they are well made. Nature and law are not at war in the matter of good-will; they go hand in hand there, and work together for the righting of wrongs. You mistreat your benefactor; you wrong nature. Why wrong the laws, as well as nature? They mean to be good, and just, and kindly to children, but you will not allow it, inciting them repeatedly against one son as if his name were legion, and not suffering them to rest contented with punishments when they are willing to rest contented with demonstrations of filial affection; and yet they were not made, surely, as a menace to those who have done no wrong. Indeed, the laws permit suit to be brought on the charge of ingratitude against persons who do not help those who have helped them.The existence of a law making ingratitude (dyapio7ia) actionable was part of the accepted tradition of the Greek rhetorical seHnee (Sopater in Walz, Rhetores Graect, VIII, 175 and 239; Cyrus, tbsd., 391; cf. Seneca, de Benef., III, 6, 1). For its existence outside the schools the evidence is conflicting. The name of the action is included in the list given by Pollux, VIII, 31, and Valerius Maximus (V, 3, ext. 3) says that Athens had such a law. On the other hand, Xenophon puts into the mouth of Socrates (Mem., II, 2,13; ef. Cyrop. I, 2,7) the statement that Athens took no cognisance of ingratitude except toward parents, and Seneca (loc. cit.) says that no nation except the Macedonians had a law against it, _ But when a man, besides failing to render like for like, even deems it right to inflict punishment in return for the very benefits that he has received, think whether there is any exaggeration of injustice which he has overlooked! That it is neither possible for him to disown a son after having already once for all exhausted his paternal right and made use of the laws, nor yet just to thrust away one who has shown himself so great a benefactor and exclude him from the house has been, I think, sufficiently established.

Therefore let us now come to the ground of disownment and let us see what the nature of the charge is. It is necessary to recur once more to the intent of the lawgiver; for, suppose we grant you briefly the right to disown as often as you wish and also concede you this right even against your benefactor, you are not to disown casually, I take it, or for any and eve cause. The lawgiver does not say that the father may disown for any reason that he may chance to allege—that it is enough just to express the wish and find a fault. Else why should we need a court? No, he commits it to you, gentlemen of the jury, to consider whether the father’s anger is based upon just and sufficient grounds or not. This, then, is what you should now look into. And IJ shall begin with what immediately followed his insanity.

The first act of his sanity was to set aside the disownment, and I was a saviour, a benefactor, all in allto him. No charge, I take it, could go with that. And as to what followed, what do you censure in all of it? What service, what attention proper to a son did I omit? When did I sleep away from home? Of what ill-timed carouses, of what riotous revels do you accuse me? What licentiousness has there been? What pander have I assaulted? Who has filed any charges? Nobody at all. Yet these are the deeds for which the law especially sanctions disownment. “No, but your stepmother began to be ill.” Well, do you accuse me of that, and demand satisfaction for the illness?

“No,” he says. What, then? “That when you are ordered to treat her, you do not consent; and on that account would merit disownment for disobeying your father.” Deferring for a moment the question what sort of orders on his part, when I cannot obey them, cause me to be considered disobedient, I first assert simply that the law does not allow him to issue all orders, and that I am not obliged to obey all orders under all circumstances. In the matter of commands, sometimes disobedience is unexceptionable, sometimes it justifies anger and punishment. If you yourself are ill, and I am indifferent; if you bid me manage the household, and I am neglectful; if you direct me to oversee the estate, and I am indiligent—all this and the like of it affords reasonable grounds for a father’s censure. But these other matters are within the discretion of us children, belonging as they do to our callings and the exercise of them; particularly if the father himself is in no way wronged. For really, if a scribe’s father gives him the order, “Write this, my boy, not that,” or a musician’s father, “Play this tune, not that,” or a coppersmith’s father, “Forge things like this, not like that,” would anyone put up with his disowning his son because the son does not exercise his calling in accordance with the views of the father? No one, I think.

In the case of the medical profession, the more distinguished it is and the more serviceable to the world, the more unrestricted it should be for those who practise it. It is only just that the art of healing should carry with it some privilege in respect to the liberty of practising it; that no compulsion and no commands should be put upon a holy calling, taught by the gods and exercised by men of learning; that it should not be subject to enslavement by the law, or to voting and judicial punishment, or to fear and a father’s threats and a layman’s wrath. Consequently, if I were to say to you, as clearly and expressly as this: ‘I am unwilling to give treatment, and I do not do so, although Ican; my knowledge of the profession is for my benefit alone and my father’s, and to others I wish to be a layman,” what tyrant so high-handed that he would constrain me to practise my calling against my will? Such things should, in my opinion, be amenable to entreaties and supplications, not to laws and fits of anger and courts: the physician ought to be persuaded, not ordered; he ought to be willing, not fearful; he ought not to be haled to the bedside, but to take pleasure in coming of his own accord. Surely his calling is exempt from paternal compulsion in view of the fact that physicians have honours, precedence, immunities, and privileges publicly bestowed on them by states.

This, then, is what I might say without circumlocution in behalf of my profession if you had had me taught and had been at much pains and expense that I might learn, and I were nevertheless reluctant to undertake this one cure, which was possible. But as things stand, consider how absolutely unreasonable a thing you are doing in not allowing me to use my own possession freely. I did not learn this profession while I was your son or subject to your jurisdiction, and yet I learned it for you (aye, you were the first to profit by it) though I had no help from you towards learning it. What teacher did you furnish money for? What supply of drugs? None at all. No, poor as I was, in want of necessities, and pitied by my teachers, I got myself educated, and the assistance towards learning which I had from my father was grief, loneliness, poverty, the hatred of my family, and the aversion of my kinsmen. In return for this, do you now think fit to utilize my profession and wish to be master of all that I acquired when you were not my master? Be content if I have already done you a good turn of my own accord, without previous indebtedness to you, for then as now nothing could have been required of meas an expressionof gratitude.

Surely my act of kindness should not become an obligation for the future, nor should the fact that I conferred a benefit of my own free will constitute a reason that I should be ordered to do it against my will; neither should it become customary that once a "man has cured anybody, he must for ever treat all those whom his former patient wishes him to treat. Under those conditions we should have elected our patients to be our masters, paying them, too, by playing slave to them and executing all their orders. What could be more inequitable than this? Because I restored you to health in this way when you had fallen severely ill, do you think that you are therefore empowered to abuse my skill?

That is what I might have said if what he enjoined upon me were possible, and I were refusing to obey him in absolutely everything, and under compulsion. But as things are, consider now what his commands are like. “Since you have cured me,” says he, “from insanity, since my wife too is insane and has the same symptoms” (for so he thinks), “and has been given up by others in the same way, and since you can do everything, as you have shown, cure her too and free her forthwith from the disorder.”” That, to hear it so simply put, might seem very reasonable, particularly to a layman, inexperienced in matters of medicine. But if you will listen to my plea on behalf of my profession, you will discover that all things are not possible to us, that the natures of ailments are not alike, that the cure is not the same or the same medicines effective in all cases; and then it will be clear that there is a great difference between not wishing to do a thing and not being able. Suffer me to indulge in scientific discourse about these matters, and do not consider my discussion of them tactless, beside the point, or alien and unseasonable.

In the first place, the natures and temperaments of human bodies are not the same, although they are admittedly composed of the same elements, but some contain more, or perhaps less, of this, others of that. And I say further that even the bodies of males are not all equal or alike either in temperament or in constitution. So it is inevitable that the diseases which arise in them should be different both in intensity and in kind, and that some bodies should be easy to cure and amenable to treatment, while others are completely hopeless, being easily affected and quickly overcome. Therefore, to think that all fevers or consumptions or inflammations of the lungs or madnesses, if of one and the same kind, are alike in all bodies is not what one expects of sound-minded, sensible men who have investigated such matters. No, the same ailment is easy to cure in this person but not in that. Just so, I take it, with wheat; if you cast the same seed into different plots of ground, it will grow in one way in the ground that is level, deep-soiled, well watered, blessed with sunshine and breezes, and thoroughly tilled, yielding a full, rich, abundant harvest, no doubt, but otherwise in a stony farm on a mountain, or in ground with little sun, or in the foothills; to put it generally, in different ways according to the various soils. So too diseases become prolific and luxuriant or less so through the soils which receive them. Omitting this point and leaving it entirely uninvestigated, my father expects all attacks of insanity in all bodies to be alike and their treatment the same.

In addition to these important distinctions, it is easy to grasp the fact that the bodies of women differ very widely from those of men, both in respect to the dissimilarity of their diseases and in respect to one’s hopefulness or despair of a cure. For the bodies of men are well-knit and sinewy, since they have been trained by toils and exercises, and by an open-air life; but those of women are weak and soft from being reared indoors, and white for lack of blood, deficiency of heat, and an excessive supply of the moist humour. They are therefore more susceptible than those of men, prone to diseases, intolerant of medical treatment, and above all, more liable to attacks of insanity; for since women have much bad temper, frivolity, and instability, but little physical strength, they easily fall into this affection.

It is not right, then, to ask of the physicians the same treatment for both, when we know that there is a great gulf between them, dissociated as they have been from the very first in their entire mode of life, and in all their activities and all their pursuits. So when you say “It is a case of insanity,” add, “insanity in a woman,” and do not confuse all these variations by subsuming them under the title of insanity, which seems always one and the same thing, but distinguish them, as is right, in their nature and see what can be done in each case. That is what we do, for, as I remember telling you in the beginning of my speech, the first thing that we consider is the constitution and temperament of the patient’s body, what quality predominates in it, whether it is inclined to be hot or cold, whether it is vigorous or senile, tall or short, fat or lean, and everything of that sort. In short, if a man examines into these matters to begin with, he will be very trustworthy when he expresses any doubt or makes any promise.

To be sure, of madness itself there are countless varieties, with many causes and even dissimilar names; for perversity, eccentricity, delirium, and lunacy are not the same thing, but are all names that signify whether one is more or less in the grip of the disease. The causes, too, are of one sort with men, another with women, and even among men they are of one sort with the young and different with the aged; for instance, with the young usually excess of humours, whereas in the case of the old, groundless prejudice and insensate anger against members of the family, attacking them frequently, disturbs them at first, then gradually deranges them to the point of insanity. Women are affected by many things which easily incline them to this ailment, especially by excessive hatred of someone, or jealousy of an enemy who is prospering, or grief of some sort, or anger; these passions, slowly smouldering and acquiring strength in a long lapse of time, produce madness.

That, father, is what has happened to your wife, and it may be that something has grieved her recently, for she, of course, hated nothing at all. However that may be, she has a seizure, at all events, and in the circumstances cannot be cured by a physician. If anyone else should engage to do it, if anyone — should relieve her, you may then hate me as offending against you. Indeed, father, I shall not hesitate to say further that even if her case were not so wholly desperate, but some hope of saving her still were in sight, even then I should not have undertaken her case lightly or ventured to prescribe for her out of hand, fearing mischance and the slanderous tongues of the common sort. You are aware that everybody thinks that all stepmothers entertain some hatred of their stepsons, even if they are good women, and that in this they suffer from a sort of insanity affecting women in common. Perhaps someone would have suspected, if the ailment had gone badly and the’ remedies had not been effective, that the treatment had been malevolent and treacherous.

As regards your wife, father, the case stands thus, and I tell you so after careful observation—she will never be better, even if she takes medicine a thousand times. For that reason it is not proper to make any attempt, unless you are trying to force me into sheer failure and wish to give me a bad name. Let me continue to be envied by my fellow-practitioners! If, however, you disown me again, I certainly, though totally alone in the world, will not pray that any adversity may befall you; but what if (Heaven forfend!) your affliction returns once more? Somehow it often happens that such afflictions, under irritation, do recur. What shall I be required to do? I will treat you even then, you may be sure, and shall never desert the post which Nature has commanded sons to hold, nor ever, so far as in me lies, forget my origin. And then, if you recover your mind, may I expect you some day to take me back again? Look! even now by these actions of yours you are bringing on the disorder and provoking the ailment. You have only just recovered from that terrible plight, and yet you strain your lungs shouting; more than that, you are angry, you take to hatred, and you invoke the laws. Ah, father, that is the way your former seizure began!