“Before telling you further, I must, I think, enlighten you a little also about what the contemporary physicians there represent in themselves, who ought to correspond to our ‘Zirlikners’. BTG XXXI

“It must without fail be noticed that in former times also on your planet such professionals as are now called there physicians were almost the same and did almost the same as our Zirlikners among us; but gradually with the flow of time, the responsible beings there who devoted themselves to such a profession, namely, to the fulfillment of such a high voluntary being-duty taken upon themselves, degenerated like everything on that strange planet and became also absolutely peculiar. BTG XXXI

“And at the present time there, when the functioning of his planetary body in one or other of your contemporary favorites becomes deranged in this or that respect, and when this being ceases to be able to fulfill his being-obligations, these contemporary physicians of theirs are also called in for help; and, no question about it, these physicians do also indeed come; but how they help and how they discharge by their inner essence the obligations taken upon themselves, it is precisely here, as our highly esteemed Mullah Nassr Eddin says, that ‘the dead camel of the merchant Vermassan-Zeroonan-Alaram is buried’. BTG XXXI

“In the case of most contemporary physicians there even appears on their faces from this smell what are called ‘bootlicking’ expressions, and their ‘bobtail’ becomes pressed tight, almost glued, ‘between their legs’. BTG XXXI

“It will be most opportune now to tell you a little also concerning those ‘medicinal means’ I mentioned, which exist there in great numbers under every kind of name and which on the advice of these contemporary physicians are introduced into themselves by other ordinary beings, ostensibly as an aid in their various illnesses. BTG XXXI

“If you should really have to exist among these favorites of yours, you will at least know from this last talk of mine that although the physicians there write a dozen wiseacring names in their prescriptions, yet in these official establishments of theirs which are called pharmacies their remedies are prepared almost always after the fashion of that Dover’s powder. BTG XXXI

“However, in any case, do remember that from among the number of many thousands of known ‘medical means’ applied by the contemporary physicians there only three, and even then only sometimes, produce some or other real results for the planetary bodies of your contemporary ordinary three-brained beings. BTG XXXI

“Now listen, my boy, to the information about the newly invented name of those terrestrial contemporary physicians articulated as ‘doctor’. BTG XXXI

“It would seem that this invention is that also of the beings of the ‘important’ community of Germany there, and they invented this articulation for the purpose of defining some merit or other of some among them, but this same invention of theirs, which was wide]y spread on the whole of their planet, became, for some reason or other, the ordinary nominal name for all the contemporary physicians there. BTG XXXI

“That you may the better understand the significance of the contemporary physicians on your planet, it is also necessary to tell you of the saying of our highly esteemed Mullah Nassr Eddin concerning these same contemporary physicians. BTG XXXI

“He speaks of them thus: ‘For our sins, God has sent us two kinds of physicians, one kind to help us die, and the other to prevent us living’”. BTG XXXI

“This being-Oskolnikoo or gratitude was manifested towards me not only by those I save and by those nearest to them, but by almost everybody who had been in this or another way in contact with me or who had heard of me, but only with the exception of those professionals among them who were their physicians. BTG XXXIII

“All the same, justice demands this to be said for them that during recent times it was indeed quite impossible to exist there without this ‘oof’ and particularly for those three-brained beings who are there the contemporary famous physicians. BTG XXXIII

“The point is that, owing to the insistence of certain hereditary power-possessing beings, there were among the number of the permanent chief participants of this new institution several what are called ‘learned physicians. BTG XXXIV

“They happened to be among the leaders of this Trusteeship, in consequence of the fact that in the presences of the hereditary power-possessing beings of that period there had again already become finally fixed and had become the inviolable part of their essence always the same ‘inner overlord’ of theirs, maleficent for the terrestrial three-brained beings, named by them ‘self-calming’, which by itself became for those unfortunates the sense and aim of their existence. And therefore in order not to make any being-effort at all, they insisted that these learned physicians should also unfailingly take part in this important institution of great social significance. BTG XXXIV

“‘To this day I cannot recall without a shudder that moment when our physicians told me that my mother could not live more than one day. BTG XLI

“‘And you, dear friend of my friend, have today involuntarily become for me like those physicians who then on the eve of the death of my dear mother announced to me that my mother could not live more than another day. BTG XLI

” ‘The same terrible feelings and sensations which I experienced then from the moment when our physicians announced to me the imminent death of my mother until her death, are now being repeated in me. BTG XLI

“Apropos, I must also tell you that on almost all the planets of our Great Universe and likewise on the other planets of this solar system also, a being becomes the head of beings by merit, just from among these former Plef-Perf-Noofs, or physicians. BTG XLV