The Imaginary Invalid

Arg. Still, you must agree to this, that doctors know more than others.

Ber. They know, brother, what I have told you; and that does not effect many cures. All the excellency of their art consists in pompous gibberish, in a specious babbling, which gives you words instead of reasons, and promises instead Of results.

Arg. Still, brother, there exist men as wise and clever as you, and we see that in cases of illness every one has recourse to the doctor.

Ber. It is a proof of human weakness, and not of the truth of their art.

Arg. Still, doctors must believe in their art, since they make use of it for themselves.

Ber. It is because some of them share the popular error by which they themselves profit, while others profit by it without sharing it. Your Mr. Purgon has no wish to deceive; he is a thorough doctor from head to foot, a man who believes in his rules more than in all the demonstrations of mathematics, and who would think it a crime to question them. He sees nothing obscure in physic, nothing doubtful, nothing difficult, and through an impetuous prepossession, an obstinate confidence, a coarse common sense and reason, orders right and left purgatives and bleedings, and hesitates at nothing. We must bear him no ill-will for the harm he does us; it is with the best intentions in the world that he will send you into the next world, and in killing you he will do no more than he has done to his wife and children, and than he would do to himself, if need be. 4

Arg. It is because you have a spite against him. But let us come to the point. What is to be done when one is ill?

Ber. Nothing, brother.

Arg. Nothing?

Ber. Nothing. Only rest. Nature, when we leave her free, will herself gently recover from the disorder into which she has fallen. It is our anxiety, our impatience, which does the mischief, and most men die of their remedies, and not of their diseases.

Arg. Still you must acknowledge, brother, that we can in certain things help nature.

Ber. Alas! brother; these are pure fancies, with which we deceive ourselves. At all times, there have crept among men brilliant fancies in which we believe, because they flatter us, and because it would be well if they were true. When a doctor speaks to us of assisting, succouring nature, of removing what is injurious to it, of giving it what it is defective in, of restoring it, and giving back to it the full exercise of its functions, when he speaks of purifying the blood, of refreshing the bowels and the brain, of correcting the spleen, of rebuilding the lungs, of renovating the liver, of fortifying the heart, of re-establishing and keeping up the natural heat, and of possessing secrets wherewith to lengthen life of many years – he repeats to you the romance of physic. But when you test the truth of what he has promised to you, you find that it all ends in nothing; it is like those beautiful dreams which only leave you in the morning the regret of having believed in them.

Arg. Which means that all the knowledge of the world is contained in your brain, and that you think you know more than all the great doctors of our age put together.

Ber. When you weigh words and actions, your great doctors are two different kinds of people. Listen to their talk, they are the cleverest people in the world; see them at work, and they are the most ignorant.

Arg. Heyday! You are a great doctor, I see, and I wish that some one of those gentlemen were here to take up your arguments and to check your babble.

Ber. I do not take upon myself, brother, to fight against physic; and every one at their own risk and peril may believe what he likes. What I say is only between ourselves; and I should have liked, in order to deliver you from the error into which you have fallen, and in order to amuse you, to take you to see some of Molière's comedies on this subject.

Arg. Your Molière is a fine impertinent fellow with his comedies! I think it mightily pleasant of him to go and take off honest people like the doctors.

Ber. It is not the doctors themselves that he takes off, but the absurdity of medicine.

Arg. It becomes him well, truly, to control the faculty! He's a nice simpleton, and a nice impertinent fellow to laugh at consultations and prescriptions, to attack the body of physicians, and to bring on his stage such venerable people as those gentlemen.

Ber. What would you have him bring there but the different professions of men? Princes and kings are brought there every day, and they are of as good a stock as your physicians.

Arg. No, by all the devils! if I were a physician, I would be revenged of his impertinence, and when he falls ill, I would let him die without relief. In vain would he beg and pray. I would not prescribe for him the least little bleeding, the least little injection, and I would tell him, "Die, die, like a dog; it will teach you to laugh at us doctors."

Ber. You are terribly angry with him.

Arg. Yes, he is an ill-advised fellow, and if the doctors are wise, they will do what I say.

Ber. He will be wiser than the doctors, for he will not go and ask their help.

Arg. So much the worse for him, if he has not recourse to their remedies.

Ber. He has his reasons for not wishing to have anything to do with them; he is certain that only strong and robust constitutions can bear their remedies in addition to the illness, and he has only just enough strength for his sickness.

Arg. What absurd reasons. Here, brother, don't speak to me anymore about that man; for it makes me savage, and you will give me his complaint.

Ber. I will willingly cease, brother; and, to change the subject, allow me to tell you that, because your daughter shows a slight repugnance to the match you propose, it is no reason why you should shut her up in a convent. In your choice of a son-in-law you should not blindly follow the anger which masters you. We should in such a matter yield a little to the inclinations of a daughter, since it is for all her life, and the whole happiness of her married life depends on it.

SCENE IV. – MR. FLEURANT, ARGAN, BÉRALDE

Arg. Ah! brother, with your leave.

Ber. Eh? What are you going to do?

Arg. To take this little clyster; it will soon be done.

Ber. Are you joking? Can you not spend one moment without clysters or physic? Put it off to another time, and be quiet.

Arg. Mr. Fleurant, let it be for to-night or to-morrow morning.

Mr. Fleu. (to Béralde). What right have you to interfere? How dare you oppose yourself to the prescription of the doctors, and prevent the gentleman from taking my clyster? You are a nice fellow to show such boldness.

Ber. Go, Sir, go; it is easy to see that you are not accustomed to speak face to face with men.

Mr. Fleu. You ought not thus to sneer at physic, and make me lose my precious time. I came here for a good prescription, and I will go and tell Mr. Purgon that I have been prevented from executing his orders, and that I have been stopped in the performance of my duty. You'll see, you'll see…

SCENE V. – ARGAN, BÉRALDE

Arg. Brother, you'll be the cause that some misfortune will happen here.

Ber. What a misfortune not to take a clyster prescribed by Mr. Purgon! Once more, brother, is it possible that you can't be cured of this doctor disease, and that you will thus bring yourself under their remedies?

Arg. Ah! brother. You speak like a man who is quite well, but if you were in my place, you would soon change your way of speaking. It is easy to speak against medicine when one is in perfect health.

Ber. But what disease do you suffer from?

Arg. You will drive me to desperation. I should like you to have my disease, and then we should see if you would prate as you do. Ah! here is Mr. Purgon.

SCENE VI. – MR. PURGON, ARGAN, BÉRALDE, TOINETTE

Mr. Pur. I have just heard nice news downstairs! You laugh at my prescriptions, and refuse to take the remedy which I ordered.

Arg. Sir, it is not …

Mr. Pur. What daring boldness, what a strange revolt of a patient against his doctor!

Toi. It is frightful.

Mr. Pur. A clyster which I have had the pleasure of composing myself.

Arg. It was not I…

Mr. Pur. Invented and made up according to all the rules of art.

Toi. He was wrong.

Mr. Pur. And which was to work a marvellous effect on the intestines.

Arg. My brother …

Mr. Pur. To send it back with contempt!

Arg. (showing Béralde). It was he…

Mr. Pur. Such conduct is monstrous.

Toi. So it is.

Mr. Pur. It is a fearful outrage against medicine.

Arg. (showing Béralde). He is the cause…

Mr. Pur. A crime of high-treason against the faculty, and one which cannot be too severely punished.

Toi. You are quite right.

Mr. Pur. I declare to you that I break off all intercourse with you.

Arg. It is my brother…

Mr. Pur. That I will have no more connection with you.

Toi. You will do quite right.

Mr. Pur. And to end all association with you, here is the deed of gift which I made to my nephew in favour of the marriage. (He tears the document, and throws the pieces about furiously.)

Arg. It is my brother who has done all the mischief.

Mr. Pur. To despise my clyster!

Arg. Let it be brought, I will take it directly.

Mr. Pur. I would have cured you in a very short time.

Toi. He doesn't deserve it.

Mr. Pur. I was about to cleanse your body, and to clear it of its bad humours.

Arg. Ah! my brother!

Mr. Pur. And it wanted only a dozen purgatives to cleanse it entirely.

Toi. He is unworthy of your care.

Mr. Pur. But since you would not be cured by me …

Arg. It was not my fault.

Mr. Pur. Since you have forsaken the obedience you owe to your doctor …

Toi. It cries for vengeance.

Mr. Pur. Since you have declared yourself a rebel against the remedies I had prescribed for you …

Arg. No, no, certainly not.

Mr. Pur. I must now tell you that I give you up to your bad constitution, to the imtemperament of your intestines, to the corruption of your blood, to the acrimony of your bile, and to the feculence of your humours.

Toi. It serves you right.

Arg. Alas!

Mr. Pur. And I will have you before four days in an incurable state.

Arg. Ah! mercy on me!

Mr. Pur. You shall fall into bradypepsia.

Arg. Mr. Purgon!

Mr. Pur. From bradypepsia into dyspepsia.

Arg. Mr. Purgon!

Mr. Pur. From dyspepsia into apepsy.

Arg. Mr. Purgon!

Mr. Pur. From apepsy into lientery.

Arg. Mr. Purgon!

Mr. Pur. From lientery into dysentery.

Arg. Mr. Purgon!

Mr. Pur. From dysentery into dropsy.

Arg. Mr. Purgon!

Mr. Pur. And from dropsy to the deprivation of life into which your folly will bring you.

SCENE VII. – ARGAN, BÉRALDE

Arg. Ah heaven! I am dead. Brother, you have undone me.

Ber. Why? What is the matter?

Arg. I am undone. I feel already that the faculty is avenging itself.

Ber. Really, brother, you are crazy, and I would not for a great deal that you should be seen acting as you are doing. Shake yourself a little, I beg, recover yourself, and do not give way so much to your imagination.

Arg. You hear, brother, with what strange diseases he has threatened me.

Ber. What a foolish fellow you are!

Arg. He says that I shall become incurable within four days.

Ber. And what does it signify what he says? Is it an oracle that has spoken? To hear you, anyone would think that Mr. Purgon holds in his hands the thread of your life, and that he has supreme authority to prolong it or to cut it short at his will. Remember that the springs of your life are in yourself, and that all the wrath of Mr. Purgon can do as little towards making you die, as his remedies can do to make you live. This is an opportunity, if you like to take it, of getting rid of your doctors; and if you are so constituted that you cannot do without them, it is easy for you, brother, to have another with whom you run less risk.

Arg. Ah, brother! he knows all about my constitution, and the way to treat me.

Ber. I must acknowledge that you are greatly infatuated, and that you look at things with strange eyes.

SCENE VIII. – ARGAN, TOINETTE, BÉRALDE

Toi. (to Argan). There is a doctor, here, Sir, who desires to see you.

Arg. What doctor?

Toi. A doctor of medicine.

Arg. I ask you who he is?

Toi. I don't know who he is, but he is as much like me as two peas, and if I was not sure that my mother was an honest woman, I should say that this is a little brother she has given me since my father's death.

SCENE IX. – ARGAN, BÉRALDE

Ber. You are served according to your wish. One doctor leaves you, another comes to replace him.

Arg. I greatly fear that you will cause some misfortune.

Ber. Oh! You are harping upon that string again?

Arg. Ah! I have on my mind all those diseases that I don't understand, those…

SCENE X. – ARGAN, BÉRALDE, TOINETTE

(dressed as a doctor)

Toi. Allow me, Sir, to come and pay my respects to you, and to offer you my small services for all the bleedings and purging you may require.

Arg. I am much obliged to you, Sir. (To Béralde) Toinette herself, I declare!

Toi. I beg you will excuse me one moment, Sir. I forgot to give a small order to my servant.

SCENE XI. – ARGAN, BÉRALDE

Arg. Would you not say that this is really Toinette?

Ber. It is true that the resemblance is very striking. But it is not the first time that we have seen this kind of thing, and history is full of those freaks of nature.

Arg. For my part, I am astonished, and …

SCENE XII. – ARGAN, BÉRALDE, TOINETTE

Toi. What do you want, Sir?

Arg. What?

Toi. Did you not call me?

Arg. I? No.

Toi. My ears must have tingled then.

Arg. Just stop here one moment and see how much that doctor is like you.

Toi. Ah! yes, indeed, I have plenty of time to waste! Besides, I have seen enough of him already.

SCENE XIII. – ARGAN, BÉRALDE

Arg. Had I not seen them both together, I should have believed it was one and the same person.

Ber. I have read wonderful stories about such resemblances; and we have seen some in our day that have taken in everybody.

Arg. For my part, I should have been deceived this time, and sworn that the two were but one.

SCENE XIV. – ARGAN, BÉRALDE, TOINETTE (as a doctor)

Toi. Sir, I beg your pardon with all my heart.

Arg. (to Béralde). It is wonderful.

Toi. You will not take amiss, I hope, the curiosity I feel to see such an illustrious patient; and your reputation, which reaches the farthest ends of the world, must be my excuse for the liberty I am taking.

Arg. Sir, I am your servant.

Toi. I see, Sir, that you are looking earnestly at me. What age do you think I am?

Arg. I should think twenty-six or twenty-seven at the utmost.

Toi. Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! I am ninety years old.

Arg. Ninety years old!

Toi. Yes; this is what the secrets of my art have done for me to preserve me fresh and vigorous as you see.

Arg. Upon my word, a fine youthful old fellow of ninety!

Toi. I am an itinerant doctor, and go from town to town, from province to province, from kingdom to kingdom, to seek out illustrious material for my abilities; to find patients worthy of my attention, capable of exercising the great and noble secrets which I have discovered in medicine. I disdain to amuse myself with the small rubbish of common diseases, with the trifles of rheumatism, coughs, fevers, vapours, and headaches. I require diseases of importance, such as good non-intermittent fevers with delirium, good scarlet-fevers, good plagues, good confirmed dropsies, good pleurisies with inflammations of the lungs. These are what I like, what I triumph in, and I wish, Sir, that you had all those diseases combined, that you had been given up, despaired of by all the doctors, and at the point of death, so that I might have the pleasure of showing you the excellency of my remedies, and the desire I have of doing you service!

Arg. I am greatly obliged to you, Sir, for the kind intentions you have towards me.

Toi. Let me feel your pulse. Come, come, beat properly, please. Ah! I will soon make you beat as you should. This pulse is trifling with me; I see that it does not know me yet. Who is your doctor?

Arg. Mr. Purgon.

Toi. That man is not noted in my books among the great doctors. What does he say you are ill of?

Arg. He says it is the liver, and others say it is the spleen.

Toi. They are a pack of ignorant blockheads; you are suffering from the lungs.

Arg. The lungs?

Toi. Yes; what do you feel?

Arg. From time to time great pains in my head.

Toi. Just so; the lungs.

Arg. At times it seems as if I had a mist before my eyes.

Toi. The lungs.

Arg. I feel sick now and then.

Toi. The lungs.

Arg. And I feel sometimes a weariness in all my limbs.

Toi. The lungs.

Arg. And sometimes I have sharp pains in the stomach, as if I had the colic.

Toi. The lungs. Do you eat your food with appetite?

Arg. Yes, Sir.

Toi. The lungs. Do you like to drink a little wine?

Arg. Yes, Sir.

Toi. The lungs. You feel sleepy after your meals, and willingly enjoy a nap?

Arg. Yes, Sir.

Toi. The lungs, the lungs, I tell you. What does your doctor order you for food?

Arg. He orders me soup.

Toi. Ignoramus!

Arg. Fowl.

Toi. Ignoramus!

Arg. Veal.

Toi. Ignoramus!

Arg. Broth.

Toi. Ignoramus!

Arg. New-laid eggs.

Toi. Ignoramus!

Arg. And at night a few prunes to relax the bowels.

Toi. Ignoramus!

Arg. And, above all, to drink my wine well diluted with water.

Toi. Ignorantus, ignoranta, ignorantum. You must drink your wine pure; and to thicken your blood, which is too thin, you must eat good fat beef, good fat pork, good Dutch cheese, some gruel, rice puddings, chestnuts, and thin cakes,5 to make all adhere and conglutinate. Your doctor is an ass. I will send you one of my own school, and will come and examine you from time to time during my stay in this town.

Arg. You will oblige me greatly.

Toi. What the deuce do you want with this arm?

Arg. What?

Toi. If I were you, I should have it cut off on the spot.

Arg. Why?

Toi. Don't you see that it attracts all the nourishment to itself, and hinders this side from growing?

Arg. May be; but I have need of my arm.

Toi. You have also a right eye that I would have plucked out if I were in your place.

Arg. My right eye plucked out?

Toi. Don't you see that it interferes with the other, and robs it of its nourishment? Believe me; have it plucked out as soon as possible; you will see all the clearer with the left eye.

Arg. There is no need to hurry.

Toi. Good-bye. I am sorry to leave you so soon, but I must assist at a grand consultation which is to take place about a man who died yesterday.

Arg. About a man who died yesterday?

Toi. Yes, that we may consider and see what ought to have been done to cure him. Good-bye.

Arg. You know that patients do not use ceremony.

SCENE XV. – ARGAN, BÉRALDE

Ber. Upon my word, this doctor seems to be a very clever man.

Arg. Yes, but he goes a little too fast.

Ber. All great doctors do so.

Arg. Cut off my arm and pluck out my eye, so that the other may be better. I had rather that it were not better. A nice operation indeed, to make me at once one-eyed and one-armed.

SCENE XVI. – ARGAN, BÉRALDE, TOINETTE

Toi. (pretending to speak to somebody). Come, come, I am your servant; I'm in no joking humour.

Arg. What is the matter?

Toi. Your doctor, forsooth, who wanted to feel my pulse!

Arg. Just imagine; and that, too, at fourscore and ten years of age.

Ber. Now, I say, brother, since you have quarrelled with Mr. Purgon, won't you give me leave to speak of the match which is proposed for my niece?

Arg. No, brother; I will put her in a convent, since she has rebelled against me. I see plainly that there is some love business at the bottom of it all, and I have discovered a certain secret interview which they don't suspect me to know anything about.

Ber. Well, brother, and suppose there were some little inclination, where could the harm be? Would it be so criminal when it all tends to what is honourable – marriage?

Arg. Be that as it may, she will be a nun. I have made up my mind.

Ber. You intend to please somebody by so doing.

Arg. I understand what you mean. You always come back to that, and my wife is very much in your way.

Ber. Well, yes, brother; since I must speak out, it is your wife I mean; for I can no more bear with your infatuation about doctors than with your infatuation about your wife, and see you run headlong into every snare she lays for you.

Toi. Ah! Sir, don't talk so of mistress. She is a person against whom there is nothing to be said; a woman without deceit, and who loves master ah! who loves him… I can't express how much.

Arg. (to Béralde). Just ask her all the caresses she lavishes for me.

Toi. Yes, indeed!

Arg. And all the uneasiness my sickness causes her.

Toi. Certainly.

Arg. And the care and trouble she takes about me.

Toi. Quite right. (To Béralde) Will you let me convince you; and to show you at once how my mistress loves my master. (To Argan) Sir, allow me to undeceive him, and to show him his mistake.

Arg. How?

Toi. My mistress will soon come back. Stretch yourself full-length in this arm-chair, and pretend to be dead. You will see what grief she will be in when I tell her the news.

Arg. Very well, I consent.

Toi. Yes; but don't leave her too long in despair, for she might die of it.

Arg. Trust me for that.

Toi. (to Béralde). Hide yourself in that corner.

SCENE XVII. – ARGAN, TOINETTE