The Physician's Tale Essay

his

his

his

his

his

can come to the conclusion that all physicians were well looked after and were a valuable asset to all pharaoh. In wartime and on journeys anywhere within Egypt, the sick are all treated free of charge, because doctors are paid by

Chaucer also stretches this theme seen in The Miller into The Doctor’s prologue. In general, Doctor’s are viewed a good, moral,

his

The Doctor was well-educated in the works of Rufus, Hippocrates, Hali, etc. “he did not read the Bible very much” (14). This lack of Biblical guidance leads him down a path of moral turpitude. He schemes with the apothecaries to defraud their patients by purposefully prescribing incorrect medicine that perpetuates return business. This scheme leads to “each [making] money from the other’s guile” (14). Furthermore, with a greedy desire for more gold, the Doctor continues to conduct himself in other unethical ways. The Doctor exploits the diseases of his patients and “[keeps] the gold he [wins] in pestilence” (15). He capitalizes on ill patients to fulfill his greed for fancy clothing. The Doctor is more concerned with his appearance and material things such as “garments… lined with taffeta,” (15) rather than the welfare of his own patients. The actions of the Doctor are ethically questionable. Geoffrey Chaucer utilizes this moral ambiguity to comment on the Third Estate and allow the reader to overlook the pilgrim’s necessary evil actions. The Doctor schemes patients out of money and feels that he is absolved of his guilt because this it is expected of

Compared to today many people lacked understanding of disease during the Elizabethan era. However, Shakespeare showed that he understood these things by hinting accurate descriptions in his plays. Prior to Shakespeare day, in 1518 the first College of Physicians located in London was established. With a high cost to attend, and limiting it to only men, very few doctors had attended a medical school such as this one. Other doctors had gained their status after years of being an assistant.

My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing” (Pg. 648, Line 1-9). Jane husband in the book of “The Yellow Wallpaper” as him being a Physician made him feel he was right in everything. He was portrayed as a know it all and told Jane when who can visit and what to do. “John says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall” (Pg. 650, Line 73-74).

his

Chaucer uses stylistic devices such as juxtaposition and analogy in rhetorical questioning when illustrating the Parson in order to reveal the inherent good of this church official. In the beginning of the stanza, Chaucer juxtaposes “poor” and “rich” by writing: “A holy-minded man of good renown / There was, and poor, the Parson to a town, / Yet he was rich in holy thought and work” (Chaucer 487-489). The Parson is by no means monetarily rich because he quite often gave “to poor parishioners round about / Both from church offerings and his property” (Chaucer 498-499). He is undeniably a very generous person but this led him to a life of low level materialistic wealth. It is revealed that he did not mind having little money because “He could in little find sufficiency” (Chaucer 500). This means that the Parson

The reader can infer that the Doctor is wealthy because of the clothing that he wears and how he saves his gold. His outfit was, “Blood-red garments, slashed with bluish grey and lined with taffeta”(449-450). These clothes

The Doctor’s intellect is the primary focus of his section of the prologue, including comments such as, “No one alive could talk as well as he did on points of medicine and of surgery” (Chaucer 422-423). However, the focus of other characters’ sections had mainly been religion. The Doctor’s section does not discuss his morals and religious tendencies the way the narrator did for everyone else. The narrator concentrated on his intelligence, making him stand out. Along with this, the narrator also talks about how often the Doctor reads, in the aforementioned quote on lines 439 to 444. This differs from characters such as the Manciple who is described as intelligent yet illiterate (Chaucer 592-593). The narrator continually highlights the Doctor’s intelligence in a way that he did not for any other