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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: about both. Plato has several good notions about medicine; according to
him, 'the eye cannot be cured without the rest of the body, nor the body
without the mind' (Charm.). No man of sense, he says in the Timaeus, would
take physic; and we heartily sympathize with him in the Laws when he
declares that 'the limbs of the rustic worn with toil will derive more
benefit from warm baths than from the prescriptions of a not over wise
doctor.' But we can hardly praise him when, in obedience to the authority
of Homer, he depreciates diet, or approve of the inhuman spirit in which he
would get rid of invalid and useless lives by leaving them to die. He does
not seem to have considered that the 'bridle of Theages' might be
accompanied by qualities which were of far more value to the State than the
The Republic |
