was fast approaching to his end, and Petrarch had little hope of his convalescence, at least in the hands of doctors.

A message from the Pope produced an imprudent letter from the poet, in which he says, "Holy father! I shudder at the account of your fever; but, believe me, I am not a flatterer.

I tremble to see your bed always surrounded with physicians, who are never agreed, because it would be a reproach to the second to think like the first.

'It is not to be doubted,' as Pliny says, 'that physicians, desiring to raise a name by their discoveries, make experiments upon us, and thus barter away our lives.

There is no law for punishing their extreme ignorance.