[The Essays of Montaigne by Michel de Montaigne]@TWC D-Link book
The Essays of Montaigne

CHAPTER XX
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I more unwillingly visit the sick in whom by love and duty I am interested, than those I care not for, to whom I less look.

I take possession of the disease I am concerned at, and take it to myself.

I do not at all wonder that fancy should give fevers and sometimes kill such as allow it too much scope, and are too willing to entertain it.

Simon Thomas was a great physician of his time: I remember, that happening one day at Toulouse to meet him at a rich old fellow's house, who was troubled with weak lungs, and discoursing with the patient about the method of his cure, he told him, that one thing which would be very conducive to it, was to give me such occasion to be pleased with his company, that I might come often to see him, by which means, and by fixing his eyes upon the freshness of my complexion, and his imagination upon the sprightliness and vigour that glowed in my youth, and possessing all his senses with the flourishing age wherein I then was, his habit of body might, peradventure, be amended; but he forgot to say that mine, at the same time, might be made worse.

Gallus Vibius so much bent his mind to find out the essence and motions of madness, that, in the end, he himself went out of his wits, and to such a degree, that he could never after recover his judgment, and might brag that he was become a fool by too much wisdom.


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