Asklepios: Ancient Hero of Medical Caring
James E. Bailey, MD, MPH
Western culture's demands of integrity, sacrifice, and com-
passion from its physician healers have roots in the mythic
traditions of ancient Greece. By understanding these tra-
ditions, modern physicians can better understand their
patients' expectations and the high expectations physi-
cians often have for themselves. The mythic figure Askl-
epios was the focus of Greek and Roman medical tradition
from approximately 1500 BC to 500 AD. As a physician-
hero, Asklepios exemplified the ideal physician and the
pitfalls he or she may face. With the progressive deification
of Asklepios and the spread of his worship first in Greece
and then in the Roman empire, Asklepios became gener-
ally recognized as the god of healing and served as an
object of supplication, particularly for the poor and disre-
garded. Asklepian traditions for medical service provide
historical insight into the role of modern physicians and
their obligations to care for the underserved.
From the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. For the
current author address, see end of text.
Ann Intern Med. 1996;124:257-263.
I swear by Apollo Physician, Asklepios, Hygiea, Pana-
cea and all the gods and goddesses, making them my
witnesses. . . . Into whatever houses I may enter, I will
come for the benefit of the sick.
Hippocratic Oath, circa 400 BC
W estern society has long expected physicians to
be caring and dedicated to patient welfare
and has even viewed compassion as integral to phy-
sician competency. Expectation of physician caring
predates Christianity. The ancient Greek origins of
Western traditions for medical caring are rooted in
the myths of the physician-god Asklepios. The Askl-
epian tradition, largely forgotten by modern physi-
cians, provides some of Western culture's earliest
guidelines for physician behavior. Prominent ancient
physicians, including Galen, considered themselves
followers of Asklepios (1-3), and Plato called even
Hippocrates "the Asklepiad" (4). Although physi-
cian roles and status have changed substantially in
the last 3000 years, the public's demand for integ-
rity, sacrifice, and compassion from its physician
healers has remained relatively constant. Under-
standing the ancient Greek origins of our traditions
for medical caring can help us to understand the
basis for our own aspirations as physicians and the
expectations of our patients.
Health care reform and economic pressures have
revived ancient debates over the obligations of phy-
sicians and society to provide health care to the
medically disadvantaged. Decisions on provision of
care to the underserved are value laden and should
be informed by careful examination of personal and
societal values. The Asklepian myth illustrates an
ancient understanding of physicians' duties for pro-
viding care to the underserved, which historians
have previously underemphasized. Because Western
medical ethics originate largely from ancient
Greece, it is appropriate to examine these early
traditions in order to better understand our own
values regarding medical philanthropy.
The Homeric Asklepios
Although Mycenaean inscriptions dated as early
as 1500 BC suggest the worship of Asklepios (5),
Homer first related the myth of Asklepios (circa 900
BC). Homer does not consider Asklepios a god. As
Roman commentator Theodoretus (circa 393 to 457
AD) points out (6), Homer only refers to Asklepios
as "the blameless physician" (7). Only Asklepios's
sons, Machaon and Podalirius, appear in the Iliad
or Odyssey, in which they are presented as craftsmen
skilled in the art of healing like their father. They
serve as physicians with the Argive soldiers arrayed
against the Trojans. Although Machaon and Poda-
lirius are depicted as heroes, they are unlike all
other heroes of the Homeric epic in that they are
not recognized for their prowess in war or leader-
ship capability but for their skill as physicians (8, 9).
The wise leader Nestor recommends that great
measures be taken to save Machaon when he is
endangered in battle, saying "a leech [a physician] is
of the worth of many other men" (10).
All other Greek heroes of this period were chief-
tains and aristocrats; why did Homer elevate Askl-
epios and his sons to the status of heroes? In Ho-
meric times, physicians were of inferior standing
and were considered craftsmen, not noblemen. In
the Odyssey (11), physicians are placed in a class
with other itinerant laborers, and, in the Homeric
epic, Asklepios is not even recognized as the son of
the god Apollo. The Edelsteins (12) point out that
Asklepios is never depicted as a traditional Greek
hero. Throughout Greek literature he performs no
heroic feats other than healing. Unlike traditional
© 1996 American College of Physicians 257
Greek heroes who gain their livelihood through
conquest, Asklepios has to work for a living. This
makes Asklepios a very unusual type of hero, found
nowhere else in Greek mythology.
The Edelsteins (12) introduce the concept that
perhaps Asklepios, as an archetypal physician for
the Greeks, was first a representative and hero of
the common people, not the aristocrats. Whenever
Asklepios is mentioned, his honorific is as "a great
joy to men, a soother of cruel pangs" (13) or as a
"gentle craftsman" brought to "heal mortal men of
painful maladies" (14). In the earliest literature,
Asklepios is described primarily as a healer, helper,
and hero of the common people.
The Hesiodic Myth
The oldest written version of the myth of Askl-
epios was told by Hesiod (15) in approximately 700
BC. Only fragments remain, but they are corrobo-
rated by the tale recorded by the mythographer
Apollodorus around 50 AD (16). Apollodorus's
myth is thought to most accurately reflect the story
of Asklepios's birth and death in ancient Greek
times (17, 18):
Asclepius was . . . a son of Coronis, daughter of Phl-
egyas in Thessaly. And they say that Apollo loved her
and at once consorted with her, but that she, in ac-
cordance with her father's judgement, chose Ischys and
married him. . . . Apollo cursed the raven that brought
the tidings and made him black instead of white, as he
had been before; but Coronis he killed. As she was
burning, he snatched the babe from the pyre and
brought it to Chiron, the Centaur, by whom he was
brought up and taught the arts of healing and hunting.
And having become a surgeon, and carried the art to
a great pitch, he not only prevented some from dying,
but even raised up the dead; for he received from
Athena the blood that flowed from the veins of the
Gorgon, and while he used the blood that flowed from
her left side for the bane of mankind, he used the
blood that flowed from her right side for salvation, and
by that means he raised the dead. I found some who
are reported to have been raised by him: Capaneus
and Lycurgus . . . Hippolytus . . . Tyndareus . . . Hy-
menaeus . . . and Glaucus, son of Minos. . . . But Zeus,
fearing that men might acquire the healing art from
him and so come to the rescue of each other, smote
him with a thunderbolt.
The broad strokes of the myth are clear. Askl-
epios was the son of a god, as were Achilles and
Hercules. Like them, Asklepios shares an aspect of
his father's godlike character; Apollo is the god of
healing as well as the sender of plagues. Coronis,
Asklepios's mother, is killed by her lover Apollo
because of Apollo's jealousy. Asklepios is then born
by cesarean section, more properly called Apollo-
nian delivery, out of the womb of his dying mother,
thereby symbolizing by his very life the ability of the
physician to bring life out of death. Asklepios re-
258 15 January 1996 • Annals of Internal Medicine • Volume 124
fines the art of medicine to the degree that he can
raise the dead. Zeus then killed Asklepios because
he restored the dead to life.
As the Edelsteins (19) point out, Zeus resents
Asklepios in the same way in which he resents
Prometheus, the Greek demigod Zeus eternally
punished for bringing fire to mankind. The actions
of Asklepios and Prometheus helped mortals and
elevated the human race, making them the equals
of gods and ultimately threatening the gods' power.
Asklepios is destroyed precisely because of his benev-
olence to mankind. To the Asklepiads, the physician
followers of Asklepios, "his boldness, his Promethean
endeavor was in line with their own ideals; his suffer-
ing, in their eyes could only be merit and distinction"
(20). What made the Asklepios of Hesiod heroic
and gave his physician followers honor was that
Asklepios stood up for mankind, even risking death
to alleviate the suffering of others.
However, Asklepios's fault was not raising the
dead in general but restoring the lives of those Zeus
had condemned (21, 22). As Jonsen (23) points out
in his essay "Asklepios as Intensivist," Asklepios
was killed because he "was extending his compe-
tence into a forbidden field—life-saving service to
one whose life was forfeit to the gods." That the
gods permitted Asklepios to raise the dead is sug-
gested in the Hesiodic-Apollodorian myth by Athe-
na's act of giving him the Gorgon's blood, the
means by which Asklepios restores the dead to life.
Ovid's version of the myth (24), written between 43
BC and 18 AD, makes this explicit: " . . . to thee
shall it be counted right to restore the spirits of the
departed. But having dared this once in scorn of the
gods, from power to give life a second time thou
shalt be stayed by thy grandsire's lightning." Ovid
(25) suggests that Asklepios's error was to act
"against the will of Dis," directly at odds with the
purposes of the gods.
An essential part of the Hesiodic myth that other
interpreters have overlooked is that the persons for
whom Asklepios knowingly risked death were con-
demned criminals such as Capaneus, Lycurgus, and
Hippolytus (26). Asklepios is killed for extending his
compassion to the condemned and raising from the
dead the most infamous of men. Even a cursory
reading of the Greek tragedies shows that those
cursed by the gods were outcast by society. No one
dared assist these outcasts for fear of incurring the
wrath of the gods. The ancient Greeks considered
Asklepios as the foremost physician because he
alone dared to care for the outcast, to succor any-
one suffering, regardless of the consequences. This
suggests that the obligation of the physician to assist
the suffering, regardless of the sufferer's station and
the personal risk the physician might incur, is inte-
• Number 2
gral to the ancient Greek understanding of physi-
cian duty.
The Pindarian Myth
Contrast the stories of Hesiod and Apollodorus
with the more modern version related by the poet
Pindar (circa 520 to 442 BC) (27):
Cheiron . . . reared Asclepius, that gentle craftsman
who drove pain from the limbs that he healed—that
hero who gave aid in all manner of maladies. . . .
Apollo... bare the babe away, and gave it to the
Magnesian Centaur to teach it how to heal mortal men
of painful maladies.
And those whosoever came suffering from the sores
of nature, or with their limbs wounded either by gray
bronze or by far-hurled stone, or with bodies wasting
away with summer's heat or winter's cold, he loosed
and delivered divers of them from divers pains, tend-
ing some of them with kindly incantations, giving to
others a soothing potion, or, haply, swathing their
limbs with simples, or restoring others by the knife.
But alas! even the lore of leechcraft is enthralled by
the love of gain; even he was seduced, by a splendid
fee of gold displayed upon the palm, to bring back
from death one who was already its lawful prey. There-
fore the son of Cronus with his hands hurled his shaft
through both of them, and swiftly reft the breath from
out their breasts, for they were stricken with sudden
doom by the gleaming thunderbolt.
Pindar's myth is best known and most frequently
cited as a warning to physicians to avoid putting fee
collection above the duty to serve a patient's best
interests. Yet, Pindar's version alters essential ele-
ments of the myth. In the beginning of the passage
(which is not shown), Apollo has his lover Coronis
killed, not because of jealousy but because she con-
sents to marry the mortal Ischys without her father's
permission. Furthermore, Asklepios transgresses di-
vine decree not for compassion but for greed. These
major departures from the earliest texts are attrib-
uted to Pindar's association with the cult of the
Delphic Apollo (28). Pindar reinterprets the myth in
light of a new understanding of the Olympian gods,
in which Apollo is given a central position in the
hierarchy of the gods as a consistent harbinger of
justice. As the divine guardian of law and order, he
loses his rash and jealous Homeric character. This
emerging world view could not attribute petty jeal-
ousies to the gods nor suggest that a faultless Askl-
epios was killed because the gods wished to protect
their power.
Many commentators find Pindar's interpretation
of the Asklepios myth troubling because of its treat-
ment of his death. Roman commentator Tertullia-
nus (29) criticizes Pindar's depiction of Asklepios
for this reason. In Plato's Republic (30), Socrates
questions Pindar's version of the myth for its deg-
radation of Asklepios in the same way in which
Pindar sought to avoid degrading Apollo:
15 January 1996 • Annals of Internal Medicine • Volume 124 • Number 2
And yet in disregard of our principles the tragedians
and Pindar affirm that Asclepius, though he was the
son of Apollo, was bribed by gold to heal a man
already at the point of death, and that for this cause
he was struck by the lightning. But we . . . refuse to
believe both statements . . . if he was the son of a god
he was not avaricious . . . and if he was greedy of gain
he was not the son of a god.
The quandary related by Socrates developed as a
result of a changing understanding of the gods in
post-Homeric Greece. The sanctified gods could not
bear the same relation to a divine Asklepios as had
previously been recorded. Within this world view it
would be inconsistent for Asklepios to restore to
life those condemned by the gods, just as it would
be inconsistent for Apollo to kill Coronis in a jeal-
ous lover's rage.
Asklepios as a Physician-God
Resolution of the conflicts between the old myths
surrounding Asklepios and the emerging under-
standing of the sanctified gods came through the
progressive deification of Asklepios from approxi-
mately 500 BC to 100 AD. The earliest clear refer-
ral to Asklepios as a god in Hellenistic Greece
comes from an Athenian inscription of 420 BC (31).
The Hymns attributed to Hesiod, which were writ-
ten at the end of the fifth century BC to promote
the cults of Delphi, attest to the worship of Askl-
epios (32). The myth that emerges from the Delphic
cult is purified, and all traces of violence and jeal-
ousy are eradicated. The first complete rendering of
the divine myth does not appear until 140 AD. This
myth comes by way of Pausanias (33), a Roman,
who relates the tale he heard on his visit to Epi-
dauros, where the most famous of the temples to
Asklepios had arisen:
[Phlegyas] was accompanied by his daughter, who all
along had kept hidden from her father that she was
with child by Apollo. In the country of the Epidaurians
she bore a son and exposed him on the mountain. . . .
As the child lay exposed he was given milk by one of
the goats that pastured about the mountain, and was
guarded by the watch-dog of the herd. . . . The herds-
man . . . finding the child, desired to take him up. As
he drew near, he saw lightning that flashed from the
child, and, thinking that it was something divine, as in
fact it was, he turned away. Presently it was reported
over every land and sea that Asclepius was discovering
everything he wished to heal the sick, and that he was
raising dead men to life.
Most Roman sources agree with the outlines of
the story above and report that Asklepios was res-
urrected after his death on earth to live on as an
immortal, ever-present in the Asklepian temples, or
Asklepeions. The only healing Roman sources con-
sistently attribute to the god Asklepios during his
life on earth was that of Askles, a tyrant of Epidau-
259
ros. Although writers dispute the etymology of the
name Asklepios, several suggest that the god's name
is derived from his "epios" (Greek for gentleness,
kindness, calmness) with the tyrant Askles (34).
Thus, Asklepios's name attests to his characteristic
kindness to all those suffering. Writers agree that
mildness and kindness were Asklepios's essential
attributes and those of the ideal physician (35, 36).
In the later Greek and early Roman literature,
Asklepios increasingly appears to represent an ab-
stract personification of the ideal physician. His wife
and children are made to personify abstract medical
concepts: His wife, Epione, personifies "epios";
Machaon is the representative of surgery and Poda-
lirius, the representative of internal medicine; Hy-
giea gave Asklepios dual roles as the giver and
preserver of health; and Panacea represented the
"soothing simples" or remedies by which the god
Asklepios brought the suffering comfort.
The Rise of the Asklepeions
Scholars agree that the worship of Asklepios be-
gan in the rural provinces of Greece among the
common people. The Edelsteins (37) attribute the
rapid ascendancy of Asklepios to his popularity
among the poor and lower classes, who saw in Askl-
epios a god particularly interested in their welfare.
Alone among Greco-Roman gods, Asklepios is de-
scribed as "looking after man" and as a lover of all
people, regardless of station (38). As a physician-
god, his primary interest was to help individuals.
Asklepios was personally accessible to supplicants
through divine revelation and healing, within and
outside of his temples, as no previous god had been.
It is of particular interest that in Greek and Roman
mythology, a physician plays this role. This associa-
tion placed the physician followers of Asklepios un-
der strong obligation to serve all those suffering.
The general acceptance of Asklepios as a god in
the Greek world is signified by his coming from the
central sanctuary at Epidauros to Athens in 420 BC
and the consecration of his temples there (31). His
worship subsequently spread throughout Greece,
much of Asia Minor, and even Carthage and Egypt,
partly through Alexander the Great's staunch devo-
tion to Asklepios. Furthermore, Asklepios was
among the first foreign gods accepted in Rome. In
response to an epidemic in Rome, the Romans
consulted oracles of Apollo and were told to bring
the god Asklepios from Epidauros to Rome, where
a temple was founded around 291 BC (39, 40).
From Rome, the worship of Asklepios spread with
the expansion of the Roman empire throughout the
Western world (41).
Descriptions of the remains of the Asklepeions
260 15 January 1996 • Annals of Internal Medicine • Volume 124 • Number 2
and the worship practices there are well detailed
(42-44). Supplicants with illnesses unresponsive to
traditional therapies would make pilgrimages to
Asklepeions to entreat the assistance of the god.
Priests there would turn away those deemed incur-
able but would invite in all others to undergo "in-
cubations," in which they would sleep in the temple
and the god would visit and heal them in their
dreams. Testimonials to the many cures are in-
scribed in the walls of the temples.
Asklepios as a Man-God
Asklepios remained very different from all the
other Olympian gods. He was typically referred to
as a "daimon" (Greek for spirit) who would come
to supplicants in their dreams rather than a "theos"
(Greek for god). He was clearly understood as a
man-god, that is, as a god who once walked the
earth. He died the death of a mortal before ascend-
ing to the heavens, from which he could still visit
mankind in response to their prayers. In Roman
times Asklepios became the "most powerful antag-
onist in the spiritual struggle . . . between paganism
and Christianity" (45). Christian apologists, justify-
ing their religion, suggested that their belief that
Jesus died the death of a mortal was no stranger
than Roman beliefs about the god Asklepios, who
had suffered the same fate (46). Justin (47), a lead-
ing Christian apologist of the second century, wrote
"and when we say also that . . . Jesus Christ . . . was
crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended
into heaven, we propound nothing new and different
from what you believe regarding . . . Asclepius, who
though he was a great physician, was struck by a
thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven."
As the Edelsteins (48) point out, it is little won-
der that Asklepios presented formidable competi-
tion to the emerging worship of Jesus Christ in the
Roman Empire. Jesus is emphasized in the early
gospels as a physician, healer, and savior, with a
particular interest in the poor and destitute. Askl-
epios and Christ are similarly described as blame-
less. Church fathers found little to criticize in the
life of Asklepios on earth. As he is described during
this period, Asklepios is likened to the god of the
New Testament (49); he was viewed as provident,
and he forgave any offense because of his devotion
to mankind (50). Individual Greeks and Romans
often believed in the god Asklepios because of the
powerful cures demonstrated at his temples. Even
Galen (circa 129 to 210 AD) became a devoted
follower of Asklepios because he was healed at the
god's temple and was assisted in cures through
Asklepios's appearance in his dreams (3, 51).
 Physician Followers of Asklepios
Although ancient Greek physicians held low sta-
tus in society as itinerant craftsmen, they gained
prestige through their association with Asklepios.
Most modern commentators agree that " . . . Ascl-
epius, before becoming a healing god, was the pa-
tron saint of the medical men . . . " (52). By the
latter half of the 6th century BC, physicians (Greek,
"iatros") were increasingly referred to as Asklepiads
(Greek followers or sons of Asklepios). Authors
suggest that this title originally referred to one fam-
ily of physicians whose descendants were called
Asklepiads and into which outsiders were later ad-
mitted by adoption (53, 54). However, by the fifth
century BC, the title Asklepiad is most commonly
used generically to refer to all physicians (55, 56).
The title of Asklepiad is particularly given to phy-
sicians of note, as is witnessed by Plato's referral to
Hippocrates as "the Asklepiad" (57) and Aristotle's
referral to him as "the leader of the Asklepiads"
(58). On the other hand, priests in the temples of
Asklepios were almost always referred to as priests
or sacristans (59).
The risk for death faced by the mythical Askl-
epios was a real risk confronted by physicians in
their daily practice, as Greek historical accounts
confirm. The most famous portrayal is Thucydides'
account of the plague of Athens around 430 BC
(60):
They had not been many days in Attica before the
plague first broke out among the Athenians. . . . There
was no record of the disease being so virulent any-
where else or causing so many deaths as it did in
Athens. At the beginning the doctors were quite inca-
pable of treating the disease because of their igno-
rance of the right methods. In fact mortality among
the doctors was the highest of all, since they came in
contact more frequently with the sick.
Thucydides suggests that the physicians' craft was
not highly esteemed because of its frequent ineffec-
tiveness and was undesirable because it exposed the
physician to dangerous communicable diseases. Fur-
thermore, he implies an expectation that physicians
would not avoid such exposure because avoidance
would be inconsistent with the practice of their art.
The practice of medicine was understood to entail
responsibility to care for the sick, even if this work
placed the physician in danger. The passage does
not ascribe to the physician altruistic motives for
providing care to Athens' plague-ridden people but
simply portrays an expectation that physicians prac-
tice their art.
The Duties of the Asklepian Physician
Once Asklepios was generally recognized as the
god of medicine, physicians who considered them-
15 January 1996 • Annals of Internal Medicine • Volume 124 • Number 2
selves followers of Asklepios had a clear obligation
to treat the rich and the poor alike. The god Askl-
epios was noted for his devotion to healing the poor
(61, 62), regardless of the size of their offering (59).
The donations of the rich were used to subsidize
care for the poor in the Asklepeions. Cost shifting is
evidenced by the many temple inscriptions record-
ing cures of those able to afford traveling from out
of town (63). The Hippocratic Precepts explicitly
encouraged similar cost shifting (64).
Slavery was prevalent in ancient Greece and
Rome. There can be little doubt that slaves did not
have equal access to medical care in these societies.
However, as Asklepios rose in stature, even slaves
had recourse to his temples and could expect a
measure of assistance. Writing at the end of the first
century AD, Suetonius (65) reports:
When certain men were exposing their sick and worn
out slaves on the Island of Aesculapius [the Tiber
Island in Rome] because of the trouble of treating
them, Claudius decreed that all such slaves were free,
and that if they recovered, they should not return to
the control of their master; but if anyone preferred to
kill such a slave rather than to expose him he should
be liable to the charge of murder.
Similar manumissions of slaves were associated
with temples of Asklepios in the Roman Empire in
Orchomenos, Thespiai, Stiris, Elateia, Amphissa,
and Naupaktos (66), implying that Asklepios, alone
among the gods, viewed people as equals and that
Asklepios and his followers had a special interest in
seeing that all people were treated equally.
The Asklepian tradition in the age of the divine
Asklepios is clear in its commitment to equal ser-
vice to all people, and it demands this commitment
of its physician followers. An inscription at the
Athenian temple to Asklepios on the Acropolis
reads "These are the duties of a physician . . . he
would be like God savior equally of slaves, of pau-
pers, of rich men, of princes, and to all a brother,
such help he would give" (67).
Conclusion
Although the stories about Asklepios have largely
been forgotten, they had far more influence on an-
cient Greek and Roman societies' expectations of
physicians than did the Hippocratic corpus. Askl-
epian myth insists much more than does the Hip-
pocratic literature on care for the poor and disre-
garded, and as such it presents a different and more
suitable ethic for modern medical practice. Askl-
epian myth shows us that Greeks and Romans ex-
pected physicians to practice their craft without pri-
mary regard for the social status of their patients,
personal risk, or financial gain. Asklepios, depicted
261
in myth first as a physician-hero and then as a
physician-god, represents the ideal physician to
whom people in ancient Greece and Rome turned
for healing and relief of suffering. Although some of
the physicians who called themselves Asklepiads
were certainly charlatans, at least some of the phy-
sician followers of Asklepios aspired to emulate his
selfless caring for all those suffering. Given that
people are perhaps most equal in their capacity for
suffering, is it not intriguing that a physician-god
should be one of the only gods, in a strict caste
society, to be egalitarian in his concern? Like the
ancient Greeks and Romans, our patients are
searching for the caring attributes of Asklepios in
their providers. Perhaps by better understanding
Asklepios we can help to restore the spirit of Askl-
epios to the practice of medicine and thus satisfy
both our patients and our deepest expectations for
ourselves.
Acknowledgments: The author thanks Albert R. Jonsen, PhD,
Robert Burns, MD, and Joel D. Howell, MD, PhD, for their
review and helpful comments on the manuscript and Sharon S.
Bailey, JD, Kathon Ann Kelly, and Pamela A. Swann for their
expert editorial assistance.
Requests for Reprints: James E. Bailey, MD, MPH, The University
of Tennessee, Memphis, Department of Medicine, 842 Jefferson
Avenue, Room A607, Memphis, TN 38103.
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The truth is, an immense majority of all die as they are born—oblivious. A few, very
few, suffer severely in the body, fewer still in the mind. Almost all of Shelley's
description fits:
Mild is the slow necessity of death;
The tranquil spirit fails beneath its grasp
Without a groan, almost without a fear,
Resigned in peace to the necessity;
Calm as a voyager to some distant land,
And full of wonder, full of hope as he.
No death need be physically painful. M. Maeterlinck has been most unfortunate to be
able to say, speaking of doctors, "who has not at a bedside twenty times wished and
not once dared to throw himself at their feet and implore mercy"; but this is the
same type of hysterical statement as "all doctors consider it their first duty to protract
as long as possible even the most excruciating convulsions of the most hopeless
agony." There are no circumstances contradicting the practice of Thomas Fuller's
good physician: "when he can keep life no longer in, he makes a fair and easy
passage for it to go out." Nowadays, when the voice of Fate calls, the majority of men
may repeat the last words of Socrates: "I owe a cock to Asclepius"—a debt of
thankfulness, as was his, for a fair and easy passage.

Harvey Cushing, MD
The Life of William Osier

Submitted by:
B. Viswanathan, MD
Gettysburg, PA 17325

Submissions from readers are welcomed. If the quotation is published, the sender's name will be acknowl-
edged. Please include a complete citation, as done for any reference.—The Editors

15 January 1996 • Annals of Internal Medicine • Volume 124 • Number 2 263