“the Disease of the Doctor” Molière’s Critique of...

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were filled with enormous and unprecedented change for the medical profession in France. Citizens of the country were beginning to choose between different available types of healthcare and practitioners that practiced their brand of medicine throughout the country (Brockliss and Jones 284). The qualifications of these practictioners varied greatly—as Brockliss and Jones put it, â€Å"†¦running from learned graduate physicians to theatrical itinerant charlatans to rustic Ladies Bountiful,† (284). Although much of the population was unable to acquire the services of a well-educated physician due to poverty, essentially narrowing down choices to only lower-class practitioners, the learned medical†¦show more content†¦These are behaviors that the audience can expect from a buffoon character like Sganarelle, and presumably, from the physicians that he is satirizing. It is in the third act where we can determine the ef fect of Sganarelle as a representation of doctors and the extent of Molià ¨re’s satire in the play. Upon revealing to Là ©andre that he is not actually a doctor, Sganarelle offers this opinion of the medical profession: Sganarelle: No, I give you my word. They forced me to be a doctor willy nilly. I never set up to be as clever as that. Why, I got no higher than the second form at school. I can’t imagine where they got such an idea. But, when I saw that they were determined to make a doctor of me, I decided to play the part at their own expense. You’d never believe how the news has spread, and everyone is possessed of the idea that I’m a learned man. They come to ask my advice for miles around; and, if things go on as well as they’ve begun, I have a good mind to stick to doctoring for the rest of my life. It’d the best trade of all, I find. You get your fee just the same, whether you succeed or fail. A bad job of work never reflects on us, and we cut our cloth into any patterns we please. If a shoemaker, when he is making his shoes, happens to spoil a piece of leather, he has to pay the bill; but we can spoil a