The Doctors by Jean de La Fontaine

Two doctors, Fear-the-worst and Hope-the-best, treat the same patient with opposing expectations. Hope-the-best believes the patient may recover, while Fear-the-worst insists that medicine will be useless. The patient endures their differing treatments and eventually dies while being cared for according to Fear-the-worst’s prescriptions. Yet both doctors claim success over the illness: Fear-the-worst says he predicted the death, and Hope-the-best maintains that his own medicine would certainly have saved the patient.

By Jean de La Fontaine · First published 1668 · Genre: Fable, Satire, Didactic Poetry · 139 words

First lines

The selfsame patient put to test / Two doctors, Fear-the-worst and Hope-the-best. / The latter hoped; the former did maintain / The man would take all medicine in vain. / By different cures the patient was beset, / But erelong cancell'd nature's debt, / While nursed / As was prescribed by Fear-the-worst. / But over the disease both triumph'd still. / Said one, 'I well foresaw his death. ' / 'Yes,' said the other, 'but my pill / Would certainly have saved his breath. '[1]

[1]: Aesop, and others.

• Open reader

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Genres

• Fable — A brief didactic narrative featuring allegorically named doctors, culminating in an ironic moral observation about prediction, treatment, and self-serving claims.
• Satire — The poem mocks physicians whose opposing diagnoses and treatments are both presented as vindicated after the patient's death.
• Didactic Poetry — Written in verse and structured to convey a concise lesson about false certainty, professional vanity, and retrospective reasoning.
• Comic Verse — Its darkly comic effect arises from the doctors' absurd confidence and their competing claims of success despite the fatal outcome.

Tags

French fable · verse narrative · seventeenth-century literature · medical satire · doctors · patient · illness and death · competing physicians · pessimism · optimism · fatalism · medical treatment

What this Textopian page supports

The Doctors is listed on Textopian as a fable by Jean de La Fontaine, dated 1668 CE.

This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.

• Work type: Fable
• Author: Jean de La Fontaine
• Date: 1668 CE
• Language: English
• Genres: Fable, Satire, Didactic Poetry, Comic Verse, Epigram
• Length: 139 words
• Structure: 1 section, 2 paragraphs

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• Work identity for The Doctors by Jean de La Fontaine
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More by Jean de La Fontaine

• To Monseigneur the Dauphin (1668)
• The Grasshopper and the Ant (1668)
• The Raven and the Fox (1668)
• The Frog that Wished to be as Big as the Ox (1668)
• The Two Mules (1668)
• The Wolf and the Dog (1668)
• The Heifer, the Goat, and the Sheep, in Company with the Lion (1668)
• The Wallet (1668)
• All works by Jean de La Fontaine