The Old Woman and the Doctor (or Physician) is a story of Greek origin that was included among Aesop's Fables and later in the 4th century CE joke book, the ''

Philogelos ''Philogelos'' ( grc, Φιλόγελως, "Love of Laughter") is the oldest existing collection of jokes. The collection is written in Ancient Greek, and the language used indicates that it may have been written in the fourth century AD, accordin ...

''. It is numbered 57 in the Perry Index.

A rare fable

This fable falls into the category of jokes that were added to the Aesop corpus through the attraction of his name. Because it was largely preserved in Greek sources, it was not noted in the rest of Europe until the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ide ...

. One of its first appearances then was in an early

Tudor period The Tudor period occurred between 1485 and 1603 in England and Wales and includes the Elizabethan period during the reign of Elizabeth I until 1603. The Tudor period coincides with the dynasty of the House of Tudor in England that began wit ...

jest book, '' Merry Tales and Quick Answers'' (c.1530), under the title "Of the olde woman that had sore eyes". The joke involves a woman who asks a surgeon (in this case) to cure her from approaching blindness on the understanding that he would not be paid until she was cured. The surgeon applied salves but stole from the house anything moveable during the course of his visits. Once the cure was completed, the woman refused him payment on the grounds that now her sight was worse than ever, since she could not see any of her household effects. The story was rendered into Latin by the Papal scholar Gabriele Faerno and appeared in his collection of a hundred fables (1563) under the title "''Mulier et medicus''". His reason for preserving so slight a work was to amuse the children for whose education the book was destined. The moral he draws from it is that through evil-doing one loses the reward of any good one has done. Other English treatments include Roger L'Estrange's in his ''Fables of Aesop'' (1692), which is little different from the version in ''Merry Tales and Quick Answers'' and comes to the cynical conclusion that 'There are few good Offices done for other People, which the Benefactor does not hope to be the better himself for’t'. A decade later

Thomas Yalden Thomas Yalden (2 January 1670 – 16 July 1736) was an English poet and translator. Educated at Magdalen College, Yalden entered the Church of England, in which he obtained various preferments. His poems include ''A Hymn to Darkness'', ''Pindari ...

uses the tale for political propaganda in his ''Aesop at Court'' (1702). In his telling, the woman is despoiled by a whole team of doctors whom he likens to ministers in Parliament stealing English wealth to prosecute a foreign war.University of Virginia Librar
Fable 3
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References

{{Aesop Old Woman and the Doctor Old Woman and the Doctor Old Woman and the Doctor