Oh so smart Baccalaureate holder, who so far could not be outflanked, I shall ask you one important question. Sirs, give us your attention. Quite early to-day, slightly before I had breakfast, a once lovely young Italian lady came to me. In fact, I still think of her as being somewhat a young girl. She was all pale-fleshed. The best doctors call it a white fever. She came complaining of a migraine, of shortness of breath, of feeling overburdened, of swollen legs and terrible weariness; of a pounding heart, and of a choked feeling, also called hysterical inhalation, which, like all illnesses ending in –ic, casts a snub on Galen. She appeared worn out and looked as green as goose droppings. Judging from her small racing heartbeat and the foul urine she brought in a container, she appeared not to be free of feverish bouts. Lastly, she was so weak that she came from her bed on horseback, actually, it was a mule. She hadn’t had her menses since that day that is called the day of lots of water. But she told me in my ear that it was a real marvel that she wasn’t dead. Because in her line of work there wasn’t much love, just too much heartiness. Her gallant guy had gone to Germany to serve on a campaign for mister Brandenburg. So far a bunch of charlatans, doctors, apothecaries, and surgeons have been working in vain to cure her illness, going so far as the new influenzas of that dopey Van Helmont, using everything from crab eyes to alchemy. Kindly tell me what’s left, in keeping with orthodoxy, to do for her. Baccalaureate Holder Give a clyster, Afterwards purify, Then purge. CHORUS You answered really, really well, You really deserve to enter into our learned group SAME DOCTOR But if such an enormous and mortally obstinate withering of the natural organs cannot be cured by giving a clyster, purifying, and purging, over and over again for a hundred times, what would you finally come up with to do for her? BACCALAUREATE HOLDER Order her, in the name of blessed Hippocrates, to couple with a good young lad. GENTLEMAN IN CHARGE Do you swear to observe the statutes prescribed by the faculty with sense and judgment? BACCALAUREATE HOLDER I do swear GENTLEMAN IN CHARGE To have in all consultations the age-old advice, whether good or bad? BACCALAUREATE HOLDER I do swear. GENTLEWOMAN IN CHARGE Never to resort to any remedies besides those only of the resourceful faculty lest the sick person should wear out and die of his illness? BACCALAUREATE HOLDER I do swear. GENTLEMAN IN CHARGE With this venerable and learned doctor’s cap, I give and grant you the power, might and medical license, plus the approach to take, namely, Clysterizing, Purifying, Purging, Bleeding, Ventilating, Sacrificing, Piercing, Slicing, Cutting, Drenching, Burning,