In _A Very Woman_(281) Paulo, on entering with two surgeons, is thus addressed: DUKE. My hand! You rather Deserve my knee, and it shall bend as to A second father, if your saving aids Restore my son. VICEROY. Rise, thou bright star of knowledge, Thou honour of thy art, thou help of nature. Thou glory of our academies! The old saying, “Ubi tres medici ibi duo athei,” referred to by Sir T. Browne in _Religio Medici_ is recalled to us by these lines: VICEROY. Observe his piety; I have heard, how true I know not, most physicians, as they grow Greater in skill, grow less in their religion; Attributing so much to natural causes, That they have little faith in that they cannot Deliver reason for; this doctor steers Another course.(282) We find them again in _The Emperor of the East_,(283) where a surgeon is contrasted with an empiric who vends his wares and talks much Latin, like the quack in Ben Jonson’s _Alchemist_, while Paulinus complains of the many medical impostors who prey upon the rich. The crisis of _The Duke of Milan_(284) owes much to the action of doctors. The plot of _A Very Woman_ hinges largely on the skill of the doctor Paulo, to whom we have referred above. In this play we have two victims of melancholy, Almira and Cardenes; the former is cured by falling in love with the disguised John Antonio; the latter is Paulo’s patient. The recovery of the avaricious father in _The Roman Actor_(285) is due to Paris acting in the part of a doctor. The physician Dinant in _The Parliament of Love_ gives the gallants a good lesson (IV., 5). And in _The Picture_(286) we find an elaborate simile, in which soldiers are said to be the surgeons of the State. In the same play Hilario,(287) when on starvation fare, is accosted by a surgeon, who invites him to sell himself for “a living anatomy to be set up in the surgeons’ hall.” Such passages,(288) and the zest with which Massinger refers to potatoes, eringos, and the like,(289) together with the rather wearisome allusions which he makes to “caudles” and “cullises,”(290) lead us to wonder whether at one time of his life he may have seriously studied medicine. There is a significant passage in _The Parliament of Love_,(291) where Chamont says to the doctor Dinant, Good master doctor, when your leisure serves, Visit my house; when we least need their art, Physicians look most lovely. And close intercourse with doctors may have suggested the lines immediately below: NOVALL. The knave is jealous. PERIGOT. ’Tis a disease few doctors cure themselves of.