Humanity is the regular
business of all you who practise as physicians. And, in my
opinion, to put your science at the head and front of life’s
pursuits is to decide reasonably and rightly. This at all events
seems to be the case if man’s most precious possession, life, is
painful and not worth living, unless it be lived in health, and if for
health we are dependent on your skill. In your own case medicine
is seen, as it were, with two right hands; you enlarge the accepted
limits of philanthropy by not confining the application of your skill
to men’s bodies, but by attending also to the cure of the
diseases of their souls. It is not only in accordance with
popular report that I thus write. I am moved by the personal
experience which I have had on many
occasions and to a remarkable degree at the present time, in the midst
of the unspeakable wickedness of our enemies, which has flooded our
life like a noxious torrent. You have most skilfully dispersed it
and by pouring in your soothing words have allayed the inflammation of
my heart. Having regard to the successive and diversified attacks
of my enemies against me, I thought that I ought to keep silence and to
bear their successive assaults without reply, and without attempting to
contradict foes armed with a lie, that terrible weapon which too often
drives its point through the heart of truth herself. You did well
in urging me not to abandon the defence of truth, but rather to convict
our calumniators, lest haply, by the success of lies, many be hurt.