I am at grips with one of the worst diseases - painful, dreadful, and incurable. Yet even the pain itself, I find, is not so intolerable as to plunge a man of understanding into frenzy or despair. At least I have one advantage over the stone. It will gradually reconcile me to what I have always been loath to accept - the inevitable end. The more it presses and importunes me, the less I will fear to die.
   As for the rest, I have found that the counsel to keep a stiff upper-lip in the face of suffering is pure show. Why should philosophy, which is concerned with the essential things of life, occupy itself with these externals? Let us leave that to actors who put such great weight on gestures. Philosophy should not hesitate to permit our giving voice to pain, even if it does no good. It should allow the sighs, sobs, palpitations, and pallor which nature renders involuntary, provided our courage is undaunted. What does it matter if we wring our hands, so long as we do not wring our thoughts?
   In such extremities [of pain], it is no great matter if we screw up our face. If the body finds relief in complaining, let it complain. If agitation gives it ease, let it toss and tumble at will. If the disease seems to evaporate (as some doctors think it helps women in childbirth) in loud outcries – or if they only divert us from its torments – let it roar at the top of its lungs. We have enough to do in dealing with the disease itself, without bothering over these superfluities.
   In my own case I have come off a little better. I do not need to roar - merely groaning does the work. Not that I try to hold myself back; but either the pains are not excessive for me, or I have more than ordinary patience. When I am in the depths of torment, I try myself out; and I have always found I could talk, think, and give as coherent a reply as at any time - but not so steadily, due to the interruption of the pains.
   When my visitors think I am stricken worst and hesitate to trouble me with talk, I often essay my strength and set on foot a conversation as remote as possible from my ailment. I can do anything by fits and starts - but it must not be for long. What a pity I am not gifted like that man in Cicero who, dreaming he was lying with a wench, awoke to find he had discharged his stone in the sheets! My own pains have strangely blighted my taste for wenching.
   During the intervals between attacks, when my vessels are merely sore and weak, I quickly recover my usual frame of mind, for I have always trained myself to take alarm at nothing but what is immediate and palpable.
   Yet, I have been rather roughly handled for a beginner. The stone caught me suddenly and unawares, dropping me at one swoop from an easy and pleasant life into the most dolorous that one can imagine. It attacked me at the outset more sharply than it does most men. The spells come so fast I am scarcely ever at ease. Yet up till now I have kept my head; and, if I can continue to hold my mind steady, I will be better off than thousands of others who suffer from no ills or fevers except those created by their own mental instability.
   It may be that I inherited my hatred for doctoring, but in any case I have strengthened it by arguments and reasons. In the first place, the experience of others makes me fearful of it. No one, I see, falls sick so often and takes so long to recover as those who are enthralled by the rules of medicine. Their very health is weakened and injured by their diets and precautions. Doctors arenot satisfied to deal with the sick; but they are forever meddling with the well, in order that no one shall escape from under their thumbs. I have been sick often enough to learn that I can endure my disease (and I have had a taste of all sorts) and get rid of it as nicely as anyone else, and without adding to it the vileness of their prescriptions.
   My mode of living is the same in sickness as in health: the same bed, hours, food, and drink. I add nothing to them but moderation according to the state of my appetite. My health consists of maintaining my habitual course. I find that illness puts me off on one side; if I followed the doctors, they would put me off on the other - so that between nature and art I would be completely unseated.
   I firmly believe that things to which I have been long accustomed cannot harm me, and I lay great weight on my inclinations and desires. I do not like to cure one disease by another, and I hate remedies, which are more troublesome than the disease itself. To be afflicted by colic and to be afflicted by abstaining from oysters are two evils in the place of one. Since we must run a chance one way or the other, let it be in the direction of our pleasures.
   A gentleman in my neighborhood, who is terribly beset by the gout, was ordered to give up all salted meats. And he used to reply that in the height of the attacks he needed something to rage and swear at. By cursing now a Bologna sausage and again a smoked tongue he found great relief from his pains.
   My appetite regulates itself according to the condition of my stomach. Wine is hurtful to sick people, and it is the first thing my palate disrelishes - and most invincibly. Whatever I take against my liking harms me, and nothing hurts me that I eat with appetite.    I have never received harm from any action that was very agreeable to me, and accordingly I have made all my medical theories yield to my pleasures. Indeed, when I am sick I am often sorry I do not have some longing that would give me pleasure to satisfy.
   You will always find in medicine an authority to endorse your whims. If your doctor does not approve of your drinking this kind of wine or eating that sort of food, do not worry over it. I'll find you another who will be of a different opinion.
   Doctors have a clever way of turning everything to their advantage. Whenever nature, luck, or anything else benefits our health, they lay it to their medicine. When things go badly they disown all responsibility and throw the blame on their patient: "He lay with his arms uncovered; the rattle of a coach worsened him-somebody left the window open; he slept on his left side; he has the wrong mental outlook." Or else they make our turn for ill serve their own business. They try to tell us that without their treatment things would have been still worse. When they have plunged a man from a chill into a recurrent fever, they say that if it were not for them it would have been a continual fever.    They run no risks of failing in their trade, for they convert even their losses into profits.
   In antiquity and since then, there have been countless changes in medicine - for the most part sweeping and entire. In our times, for example, we have those introduced by Paracelsus, Fiorvanti, and Argentier. They have altered not only the prescriptions, but I am told, the whole body and rules of the art, accusing all their predecessors of ignorance and imposition. At this rate you may imagine the plight of the poor patient.
How often we see one physician impute the death of a patient to the medicine of another physician! Yet how, God knows, shall a doctor discover the true symptoms of a disease when each is capable of an endless variety? How many controversies have raged between them on the significance of the urine? For my part, I would prefer to trust a physician who has himself suffered from the malady he would treat. The others describe diseases as our town criers do a dog or horse - such color, height, and ears. But bring the beast to him, and he can't recognize it.
   In my own sickness I have never found three doctors of the same opinion. Aperients, I am advised, are proper for a man afflicted with the stone - by dilating the vessels they help discharge the viscous matter out of which the gravel is formed. Again, aperients are dangerous, because, by dilating the vessels, they help the formative matter to reach the kidneys, which naturally seize and retain it.
   It is good, they say, to urinate frequently, for this prevents the gravel from settling in the bladder and coagulating into a stone. But frequent urinations are bad, because the deposits cannot be voided without grave violence to the tissues. It is good to have frequent intercourse with women, for that opens the passages; and it is bad, because it inflames, tires, and weakens the kidneys.    Hot baths are good because they relax the parts, and they are bad because they help bake and harden the gravel. Because the doctors were afraid of stopping dysentery lest they put the patient in a fever, they killed a friend of mine who was worth more than the whole pack of them together. Thus they juggle and prate at our expense. They can't furnish me one argument that I'll not find a contrary of equal force. So let them not rail against those who, gripped by a disease, allow themselves to be gently guided by their own appetites and the promptings of nature, and trust to common luck.
   In short, I honor physicians not for their services, but for themselves. I have known many a good man among them, and most worthy of affection. I do not attack them, but their art. Nor do I blame them for taking advantage of our folly, for most men do as much.    Many professions, both of greater and lesser dignity, live on gulling the public.
When I am sick, I send for them if they are near at hand, merely to have their company; and I pay them as others do. I give them leave to order me to keep myself warm, for I like to do it anyway. I let them recommend leeks or lettuce for my soup, put me on white wine or claret, or anything else that is indifferent to my taste and habits.
I know right well that I am not coddling them in this, for to them bitterness and strangeness is the very essence of a remedy. A neighbor of mine takes wine as an effective medicine for fever. Why? Because he abominates it.
   Yet how many doctors do we see who, like myself, despise taking medicine, who live on a liberal diet and quite contrary to the rules they prescribe for their patients? What is this but sheer abuse of our simplicity!
   It is fear of pain and death, impatience at being ill, and reckless search for cures, which blind us. It is pure cowardice that makes us so gullible. Yet most men do not so much believe in doctors as submit and consent to them.

*Michel de Montaigne: French Renaissance thinker and inventor of the "essay" as a literary genre. He took himself as the great object of study in his Essays. By reflecting on his habits, his opinions and those of others, his readings, travels as well as his experiences, he was searching for truth. One of his arguments was that man must learn to know himself before he can gain knowledge of others. He was a striking representative of Renaissance skepticism. His maxim was "Que-je sais?" or "What do I know?" The early essays reflect Montaigne's concern with pain and death.