now studying how to go in and out more conveniently than by the door. (65.) Physicians have been attacked[800] for a long time, and yet every one consults them; neither the sallies of the stage nor of satire diminish their fees;[801] they give dowries to their daughters, have sons magistrates and bishops;[802] and all this is paid for by the very persons who make fun of them. People who are in good health fall ill some day or other, and then they want a man whose trade it is to assure them they shall not die. As long as men are liable to die, and are desirous to live, a physician will be made fun of, but he will be well paid. (66.) A good physician is a man who employs specifics, or, if he has not got any, allows those persons who have them to cure his patient (67.) Quacks are rash, and therefore rarely successful; hence physic and physicians are in vogue; the latter let you die, the former kill you. (68.) Carro Carri[803] lands in France with a recipe which he says cures in a short time, and which, sometimes, is a slow poison; it has been in the hands of his family for many years, but he has improved it. It is a specific against the colic, yet he cures quartan ague, pleurisy, dropsy, apoplexy, and epilepsy. Rack your memory a little, and mention the first disease you can think of, let us say hemorrhage; he can cure it. It is true he raises no one from the dead, and does not restore men to life, but he keeps them, of course, till they are decrepit, for it is by mere chance that his father and grandfather, who were acquainted with the secret, both died very young. Physicians receive for their visits the fees people give them, and some are even satisfied with thanks; but Carro Carri is so certain of his remedy, and of its effect, that he does not hesitate to take his fee beforehand, and expects to receive before he has given anything. If the disease be incurable, so much the better; it will be the more deserving of his attention and his remedy.[804] Begin with putting into his hands thousands of francs, make over to him some bonds,[805] and then you have no longer any need to be more uneasy about your cure than he himself is. The world is full of men with names ending in o and i, most respectable names, who are all rivals of this man, and impose on the patients and the disease. Fagon,[806] you will admit that neither your physicians nor those of all the faculties in the world always cure or are certain of their cure; but those who have inherited their empirical medicine from their forefathers, and whose experience has come to them in the same way, always promise, and even pledge themselves by oath, to cure their patients. How sweet it is for men not to abandon hope even when attacked by a mortal disease, and still to think they are pretty well when expiring! Death is then an agreeable surprise, and comes without striking terror beforehand; so that a man feels it before he has thought of preparing for it and giving himself up to it. O