[p. 29]
case as bad pilots ; the mistakes of the latter are
unnoticed so long as they are steering in a calm, but,
when a great storm overtakes them with a violent
gale, all men realise clearly then that it is their
ignorance and blundering which have lost the ship.
So also when bad physicians, who comprise the great
majority, treat men who are suffering from no serious
complaint, so that the greatest blunders would not
affect them seriously--such illnesses occur very often,
being far more common than serious disease--they
are not shown up in their true colours to laymen if
their errors are confined to such cases ; but when
they meet with a severe, violent and dangerous
illness, then it is that their errors and want of skill
are manifest to all. The punishment of the impostor,
whether sailor or doctor, is not postponed, but follows
speedily.
PART 10
X. That the discomforts a man feels after unseasonable
abstinence are no less than those of
unseasonable repletion, it were well to learn by a
reference to men in health. For some of them
benefit by taking one meal only each day, and
because of this benefit they make a rule of having
only one meal ; others again, because of the same
reason, that they are benefited thereby, take lunch
also. Moreover some have adopted one or other of
these two practices for the sake of pleasure or for
some other chance reason. For the great majority
of men can follow indifferently either the one habit or
the other, and can take lunch or only one daily meal.
Others again, if they were to do anything outside what
is beneficial, would not get off easily, but if they
