between three persons, the patient, the physician, and the disease.  Which passage has sometimes put me in mind of Julia’s saying to Augustus her father.  One day she came before him in a very gorgeous, loose, lascivious dress, which very much displeased him, though he did not much discover his discontent.  The next day she put on another, and in a modest garb, such as the chaste Roman ladies wore, came into his presence.  The kind father could not then forbear expressing the pleasure which he took to see her so much altered, and said to her:  Oh! how much more this garb becomes and is commendable in the daughter of Augustus.  But she, having her excuse ready, answered:  This day, sir, I dressed myself to please my father’s eye; yesterday, to gratify that of my husband.  Thus disguised in looks and garb, nay even, as formerly was the fashion, with a rich and pleasant gown with four sleeves, which was called philonium according to Petrus Alexandrinus in 6.  Epidem., a physician might answer to such as might find the metamorphosis indecent:  Thus have I accoutred myself, not that I am proud of appearing in such a dress, but for the sake of my patient, whom alone I wholly design to please, and no wise offend or dissatisfy.  There is also a passage in our father Hippocrates, in the book I have named, which causes some to sweat, dispute, and labour; not indeed to know whether the physician’s frowning, discontented, and morose Catonian look render the patient sad, and his joyful, serene, and pleasing countenance rejoice him; for experience teaches us that this is most certain; but whether such sensations of grief or pleasure are produced by the apprehension of the patient observing his motions and qualities in his physician, and drawing from thence conjectures of the end and catastrophe of his disease; as, by his pleasing look, joyful and desirable events, and by his sorrowful and unpleasing air, sad and dismal consequences; or whether those sensations be produced by a transfusion of the serene or gloomy, aerial or terrestrial, joyful or melancholic spirits of the physician into the person of the patient, as is the opinion of Plato, Averroes, and others.

Above all things, the forecited authors have given particular directions to physicians about the words, discourse, and converse which they ought to have with their patients; everyone aiming at one point, that is, to rejoice them without offending God, and in no wise whatsoever to vex or displease them.  Which causes Herophilus much to blame the physician Callianax, who, being asked by a patient of his, Shall I die? impudently made him this answer: 

  Patroclus died, whom all allow
  By much a better man than you.