10
You must also avoid adopting, in order to gain a patient,Apparently, in order to increase your practice by fastidiousness in the matter of dress. But the expression is very strange, and should mean, in order to effect a cure. luxurious headgear and elaborate perfume. For excess of strangeness will win you ill-repute, but a little will be considered in good taste, just as pain in one part is a trifle, while in every part it is serious. Yet I do not forbid your trying to please, for it is not unworthy of a physician’s dignity.
11
Bear in mind the employment of instruments and the pointing out of significant symptoms, and so forth.
12
And if for the sake of a crowded audience you do wish to hold a lecture, your ambition is no laudable one, and at least avoid all citations from the poets, for to quote them argues feeble industry. For I forbid in medical practice an industry not pertinent to the art, and laboriously far-fetched,See p. 308. and which therefore has in itself alone an attractive grace. For you will achieve the empty toil of a drone and a drone’s spoils.See p. 308.
