Physician, heal thyself
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Physician, heal thyself (Template:Lang-el — Iatre, therapeuson seauton), sometimes quoted in the Latin form Medice, cura te ipsum, is a proverb used from the time of Greek playwright Aeschylus (c. 525/524 – c. 456/455 BC) onward to the point of incongruity. In lines 473–5 of Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, the chorus berate Prometheus, saying that
The concept is that of a sick doctor who has at his disposal the means to relieve the suffering of others but not his own suffering, in other words, a chastising of someone who gives a moral directive that they do not apply to themselves.
The Christian disciple Luke (who was a physician himself) quotes Jesus as referring to this Greek proverb in Luke 4:23.
The usual interpretation of this passage is that, during the Rejection of Jesus, Jesus expected to hear natives of his home town of Nazareth use this phrase to criticize him.
The moral of the proverb is counsel to attend to one's own defects rather than criticizing defects in others, a sentiment also expressed in the discourse on judgmentalism.
The Latin form of the proverb, Cura te ipsum, was made famous in the Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate, and is a shortening of the phrase medice, cura te ipsum.
Some commentatorsTemplate:Who claim that the proverb is also an echo of the insults that he would hear while hanging on the cross, that is, the words may be interpreted as echoing the taunts to come down from the cross himself.
Similar proverbs can be found in other classical and Jewish literature. "Physician, Physician, Heal thine own limp!" can be found in Genesis Rabbah 23:4.
It is also the last words the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) said, before regenerating into the War Doctor (John Hurt) in "The Night of the Doctor" (2013).
See also
- And you are lynching Negroes
- Jesus and the woman taken in adultery
- List of Latin phrases
- Primum non nocere
- The Mote and the Beam
- The pot calling the kettle black
- Woes of the Pharisees
