[406d]
“A carpenter,” said I,
“when he is sick expects his physician to give him a drug which
will operate as an emetic on the disease, or to get rid of it by
purging1 or the use of cautery or the knife.
But if anyone prescribes for him a long course of treatment with
swathings2 about the head and their
accompaniments, he hastily says that he has no leisure to be sick and that
such a life of preoccupation with his illess and neglect of the work that
lies before him isn't worth living. And thereupon he bids farewell to that
kind of physician,
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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