4
This piece of advice also will need our consideration, as it contributes somewhat to the whole. For should you begin by discussing fees, you will suggest to the patient either that you will go away and leave him if no agreement be reached, or that you will neglect him and not prescribe any immediate treatment. So one must not be anxious about fixing a fee. For I consider such a worry to be harmful to a troubled patient, particularly if the disease be acute. For the quickness of the disease, offering no opportunity for turning back,I. e. from missed opportunities that have passed away while haggling over fees. It is possible that ἀναστροφή has here the sense of ἀναστρέφειν καρίδαν in Thucydides II. 49, to upset. An acute disease is not the time to upset a patient with financial worries. spurs on the good physician not to seek his profit but rather to lay hold on reputation. Therefore it is better to reproach a patient you have saved than to extort money fromOr, if Coray’s emendation be adopted, to tease. those who are at death’s door.
5
And yet some patients ask for what is out of the way and doubtful, through prejudice, deserving indeed to be disregarded, but not to be punished. Wherefore you must reasonably oppose them, as they are embarked upon a stormy sea of change. For, in heaven’s name, who that is a brotherlyThe word so translated is fairly common in the Corpus in the sense of related. Here it evidently means a loyal member of the family of physicians. physician practises with such hardness of heart as not at the beginning to conduct a preliminary examination of every illnessWith Ermerins’ reading, all the illness. and prescribe what will help towards a cure, to heal the patient and not to overlook the reward, to say nothing of the desire that makes a man ready to learn?
