The Imaginary Invalid

Through the lens of a 21st-century perspective, the practice of medicine stands between humanity and preventable death. The medical system has flaws, and its practitioners can be negligent or imperfect, even sometimes harmfully so. But for the layperson, much of medical knowledge is incomprehensible, and the doctors who speak the language of medicine are the only hope of many ill or seriously injured people. In the 21st century, there are laws, professional guidelines, review boards, and attempts at accountability that guide medical procedures and ethics. A patient can reasonably trust that their doctor is beholden to the Hippocratic Oath and will do their best to help. But the doctors in the play represent a very different ethos of medical practice. For the person with a 21st-century view of medicine, the harsh criticism and outright rejection of the field that Béralde articulates seems foolish and even dangerous. However, medical practitioners in Molière’s time, as well as in the world of the play, have very little real medical knowledge at their fingertips. Their primary function is to pompously speak Latin and Greek and order enemas, purgatives, herbal treatments, and bloodletting in a trial-and-error fashion that may kill the patient, make them well, or do absolutely nothing.

The Lillicraps acknowledge this uselessness in a roundabout way by mentioning that they choose to serve patients from the general public, since rich and famous patients expect to be cured. Implicit in this admission is the belief that the civilian patient does not require the same effort or result. As a patient, Argan is a golden goose for Dr. Purgeon. Medicine is an expensive capitalist venture even today in some parts of the world, and access to it is often a matter of money. While explaining his reasoning for matching his daughter to Thomas, Argan notes that they will inherit Dr. Purgeon’s considerable fortune, and Toinette comments, “He must have polished off a lot of patients to make that kind of money” (19). For a doctor whose motivation is greed, Argan is an ideal patient. He is convinced that he is sick, and he sees medicine as a transaction-based path to health. He has the wealth to pay for whatever medical treatment the doctor orders. As Béralde points out, Argan is strong and healthy enough to withstand the barrage of unnecessary treatments, which makes it easier for the doctor to avoid accidentally killing this steady source of income. Through his “treatments,” Argan’s supposed illness sustains itself, generating a constant stream of revenue for his doctor.

The play questions the ethics of medical treatment that is based in guesswork and often causes harm and criticizes doctors who manage to amass wealth without curing patients. In this context, a healthy bank account implies that the doctor is exploiting his sick patients. Béralde believes that there should be no medical intervention at all and that letting nature take its course is safer than allowing charlatans to experiment. Argan, however, believes in doctors. He worships them as superior intellects and wants their attention. At the end of the play, Argan reaches the level he truly wants by becoming a doctor himself. He doesn’t seem to recognize that the ceremony is fake. The play suggests that a layperson who acts as his own doctor is just as safe as, or perhaps safer than, someone who is under a doctor’s care. When Argan elicits a promise from Cléante to become a doctor, he may still be ridiculous for his veneration of the medical field, but he at least ensures that he will be in the hands of a doctor with altruistic intentions.