Original content

English translation

A physician was seen who, whenever he reached the graveyard, would draw his cloak over his head. They asked him the reason for this, and he said: I feel ashamed before the dead of this graveyard, for everyone I pass by has suffered a blow from me, and everyone I look upon has died from my potion!

O you whose judgment in treating the ailing, sick patient— the onset of death is the proof of your arrival.

In the realm of checkmate, the taking of life— you have lifted that burden from the neck of Azrael.

O you by whom the marketplace of the craft of medicine is broken, however much pain the sick endure from you.

Thanks be to God, how wondrously pleased are the corpse-washer, the shroud-seller, and the grave-digger with you.

One of the sages has said: A deficient physician is a plague upon the common people.

O you who, through your own deficient medicine, are to the common folk in the place of a plague—

what wonder is it if they curse you? To curse you is to pray against the plague.