clarify the blackness of the vapour. But, before all things, I think
it desirable to enliven him by pleasant conversations, by vocal and
instrumental music, to which it will not be amiss to add dancers,
that their movements, figures, and agility may stir up and awaken the
sluggishness of his spirits, which occasions the thickness of his
blood from whence the disease proceeds. These are the remedies I
propose, to which may be added many better ones by you, Sir, my
master and senior, according to the experience, judgment, knowledge
and sufficiency that you have acquired in our art. _Dixi_.

2ND PHY. Heaven forbid, Sir, that it should enter my thoughts to add
anything to what you have just been saying! You have discoursed too
well on all the signs, symptoms, and causes of this gentleman's
disease. The arguments you have used are so learned and so delicate
that it is impossible for him not to be mad and hypochondriacally
melancholic; or, were he not, that he ought to become so, because of
the beauty of the things you have spoken, and of the justness of your
reasoning. Yes, Sir, you have graphically depicted, _graphice
depinxisti_, everything that appertains to this disease. Nothing
can be more learnedly, judiciously, and ingeniously conceived,
thought, imagined, than what you have delivered on the subject of
this disease, either as regards the diagnostic, the prognostic, or
the therapeutic; and nothing remains for me to do but to congratulate
this gentleman upon falling into your hands, and to tell him that he
is but too fortunate to be mad, in order to experience the gentle
efficacy of the remedies you have so judiciously proposed. I approve
them in toto, _manibus et pedibus descendo in tuam sententiam_.
All I should like to add is to let all his bleedings and purgings be
of an odd number, _numero deus impare gaudet_, to take the whey
before the bath, and to make him a forehead plaster, in the