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THE DOCTOR OF PHYSIC
THE CANTERBURY TALES
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
The doctor of Physic
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In general
Prologue
How he worked
Summarize
Video
Sources
The doctor of physic
Title: Doctor
Station: Middle Class
Lines: 411-444
Traits:
• Knows authorities – Muslim writers who transferred Greek
doctors like Galen
• Astrology to diagnose
• Racket with pharmacist – gets a cut
• Fancy clothes
• Didn’t study Bible
• Flakes of gold in cordial – joke at end
Tale: Father decapitates his daughter to save her virginity.
THE PROLOGUE
The medical Doctor is the best in his profession. His practice sounds to us more like astrology
and magic than medicine, but it was typical of the period
With us there was A Doctor of Physic;
In all this world was there none him like,
To speak of physic and of surgery,
For he was grounded in astronomy.
He kept his patient a full great deal
In hours, by his magic natural.
Well could he fortune the ascendant
Of his images for his patient.
He knew the cause of every malady,
Were it of hot, or cold, or moist, or dry,
And where they engendered, and of what humor.
He was a very perfect practitioner:
The cause he knew, and of his harm the root,
Anon he gave the sick man his boot.
Full ready had he his apothecaries
To send him drugs and electuaries,
For each of them made other for to win –
His friendship was not new to begin.
Well knew he the old Aesculapius,
And Dioscorides and too Rufus,
Old Hippocrates, Hali, and Galen,
Serapion, Rhazes, and Avicen,
Averroes, Damascene, and Constantine,
Bernard, and Gatisden, and Gilbertus.
Of his diet measurable was he,
For it was of no superfluity,
But of great nourishing and digestable.
His study was but little on the Bible.
In sanguine and in perse he clad was all,
Lined with taffeta and with sendal.
And yet he was but easy of dispense;
He kept that he won in pestilence.
For gold in physic is a cordial,
Therefore he loved gold in special.
How he worked
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In his day every part of the human body was supposed to be under the domination of one
of the twelve Signs or Constellations (see Chaucer's Astrology), Aries governing the
head, Taurus the neck, etc.
Knowledge of these relations was thought so essential that a picture illustrating them was
placed in all the early printed Books of Hours or prayer books for lay use, and a physician
was supposed to choose the part of the body at which to bleed a patient according to the
sign then in the ascendant.
Complications were introduced by the sign under which the patient was born, which was
thought to rule his destiny through life; by the sign in the ascendant when his illness
began…
The skill of the astrologer-physician would be exercised in calculating the hours when the
balance of contending influences would be most favorable to his patient, and choosing
these for the application of his remedies. These remedies were directed, in the case of
disease, to restoring the balance of the four qualities of hot, cold, dry, and moist.
Chaucer's physician to attain the degree of Doctor of Physic must have mastered all this
lore, besides what was known of anatomy and other medical studies, properly so called.
He must have been a rich man to take the degree of Doctor, which involved great
expenses in fees, presents, and feasting.
He was skilful in choosing for making talismans for his patients the times when the
influence of the planets would make the talismans most efficacious.
Summarize
Pilgrim
The
Doctor (of
physic)
Major
Follies/Vices/
Transportation Physical
Negative
Traits/ and
Qualities
Distinguishing
Features
Positive Traits
/Virtues/Attribute
s
Horse
A skilled doctor,
very well
educated in
everything related
to medicine, but
not well versed in
the Bible.
Bright, deep
red clothes (the
color of blood:
irony)
Very expensive
clothes
He and the
apothecaries
benefit from each
others’
trade and they
seem to be in
cahoots together.
Loves gold-has a
lot of money but
spends little ,
does not read
Bible.
Miserly
SOURCES
http://laurabernhard.edublogs.org/files/2011/09/
pilgrim-characteristics-study-guide1am0awh.pdf
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~comitatu/PDF/Chau
cer/chaucer_gen_prol_outline.pdf