SOURCE: “Parasitology in Molière: Satire of Doctors and Praise of Paramedics,” in Literature and Medicine, Vol. 12, No. 1, 1993, pp. 1-18.

In this essay, Jaymes explicates Molière's view of health and medicine, arguing that his satire of doctors is rooted in questions of responsibility and what constitutes appropriate authority. Molière, the critic contends,“seems to take serious issue with any attempt to sever the link between mind and body.… For him consulting a physician is tantamount to abdicating responsibility for one's health, an abdication that usually consists of turning one's body over to a mere physical specialist.”

Molière's doctors are a strange lot. All the real ones in his plays are bad doctors; the only ones who heal, usually servants in a middle-class family, are masquerading as doctors.¹ Molière seems to have been fascinated by the paradox of a sclerotic, parasitic profession given to ineffective...