This made him boldly say, that he did not desire to be esteemed a
physician, if from his twenty-eighth year to his old age he had not lived
in perfect health, except some ephemerous fevers, of which he soon rid
himself; yet he was not naturally of the soundest temper, his stomach being
evidently bad. Indeed, as he saith, lib. 5, De Sanitate tuenda, that
physician will hardly be thought very careful of the health of others who
neglects his own. Asclepiades boasted yet more than this; for he said that
he had articled with fortune not to be reputed a physician if he could be
said to have been sick since he began to practise physic to his latter age,
which he reached, lusty in all his members and victorious over fortune;
till at last the old gentleman unluckily tumbled down from the top of a
certain ill-propped and rotten staircase, and so there was an end of him.

If by some disaster health is fled from your worships to the right or to
the left, above or below, before or behind, within or without, far or near,
on this side or the other side, wheresoever it be, may you presently, with
the help of the Lord, meet with it. Having found it, may you immediately
claim it, seize it, and secure it. The law allows it; the king would have
it so; nay, you have my advice for it. Neither more nor less than the
law-makers of old did fully empower a master to claim and seize his runaway
servant wherever he might be found. Odds-bodikins, is it not written and
warranted by the ancient customs of this noble, so rich, so flourishing
realm of France, that the dead seizes the quick? See what has been
declared very lately in that point by that learned, wise, courteous, humane
and just civilian, Andrew Tiraqueau, one of the judges in the most
honourable court of Parliament at Paris. Health is our life, as Ariphron
the Sicyonian wisely has it; without health life is not life, it is not
living life: abios bios, bios abiotos. Without health life is only a
languishment and an image of death. Therefore, you that want your health,
that is to say, that are dead, seize the quick; secure life to yourselves,