Amongst the doctors of our poet's time it was a common custom to throw up cases when they believed them hopeless. Shakespeare's Sempronius says, "His friends, like physicians, thrice gave him o'er," and Lord Bacon in his work on "The Advancement of Learning," says of Physicians, "In the enquiry of diseases, they do abandon the cures of many, some as in their nature incurable, and others as past the period of cure, so that Sylla triumvirs never prescribed so many men to die as they do by their ignorant edicts." We have spoken of the sword-salve cure for wounds. Of dealers in poison who visited fairs and market-places, and attracted crowds by the aid of a stage fool, we get a glimpse in "Hamlet," where Laertes says:-- "I bought an unction of a mountebank, So mortal, that but dip a knife in it, Where it draws blood, no cataplasm so rare Collected from all simples that have virtue, Under the moon can save the thing from death." There is a hit at doctors who gave others remedies they had not enough faith in to adopt for themselves:-- "Thou speak'st like a physician, Helicarnus: Who minister'st a potion unto me That thou would'st tremble to receive thyself." --_Pericles._ In the same play the true physician receives full appreciation. Cerimon says of himself:-- "'Tis known, I ever Have studied physic, through which secret art, By turning o'er authorities, I have Together with my practice, made familiar To me, and to my aid, the blest infusions That dwell in vegitives, in metals, stones. And I can speake of the disturbances That nature works, and of her cures; which doth give me A more content in course of true delight Than to be thirsty after tottering honour, Or tie my treasure up in silken bags, To please the fool, and death." And one of the two listening gentlemen adds:-- "Your honour has through Ephesus pour'd forth Your charity, and hundreds call themselves Your creatures, who by you have been restored." And Pericles, with his supposed dead wife in his arms, turning to Cerimon, who has saved her from the grave, says:-- "Reverend Sir, The gods can have no mortal officer More like a god than you." And Gower, speaking the concluding lines of the play, adds:-- "In reverend Cerimon there well appears The worth that learned charity aye wears." "_Cerimon_: I hold it ever Virtue and cunning (wisdom) were endowment greater Than nobleness and riches...."