Quote 1
"You told me to have confidence, said that confidence was indispensable, and here you preach to me distrust. Ah, truth will out!"
"I told you, you must have confidence, unquestioning confidence, I meant confidence in the genuine medicine, and the genuine me."
"But in your absence, buying vials purporting to be yours, it seems I cannot have unquestioning confidence."
"Prove all the vials; trust those which are true."
"But to doubt, to suspect, to prove—to have all this wearing work to be doing continually—how opposed to confidence. It is evil!"
"From evil comes good. Distrust is a stage to confidence. How has it proved in our interview? But your voice is husky; I have let you talk too much. You hold your cure; I will leave you. But stay—when I hear that health is yours, I will not, like some I know, vainly make boasts; but, giving glory where all glory is due, say, with the devout herb-doctor, Japus in Virgil, when, in the unseen but efficacious presence of Venus, he with simples healed the wound of Aneas:
'This is no mortal work, no cure of mine,
Nor art's effect, but done by power divine.'" (16, 59-65)
The herb-doctor is a smooth operator as well. His tactic with this sick man is to equate confidence in his medicine with faith in God. He messes with the man's head, though, by telling him to beware counterfeit meds. This makes the unwilling patient all worried, and he freaks out. We're not 100% sure if he's calling his new doubt evil or the herb-doctor's insertion of his new doubt evil. It's a toss-up, but here's what we do know: the herb-doctor applies some fancy footwork when he says "from evil comes good." Now, this is some twisty business. He could mean that God makes good things even out of bad situations, but we have no guarantee of that. What we do understand is that the herb-doctor is trying to get a divine pass with an appeal to God's power as the source of his own power.
Quote 2
"Herbs."
"What herbs? And the nature of them? And the reason for giving them?"
"It cannot be made known."
"Then I will none of you."
Sedately observant of the juiceless, joyless form before him, the herb-doctor was mute a moment, then said:—"I give up."
"How?"
"You are sick, and a philosopher."
"No, no;—not the last."
"But, to demand the ingredient, with the reason for giving, is the mark of a philosopher; just as the consequence is the penalty of a fool. A sick philosopher is incurable?"
"Why?"
"Because he has no confidence."
"How does that make him incurable?"
"Because either he spurns his powder, or, if he take it, it proves a blank cartridge, though the same given to a rustic in like extremity, would act like a charm. I am no materialist; but the mind so acts upon the body, that if the one have no confidence, neither has the other." (16, 23-35)
Always pay attention to how a person—especially a person trying to get you to do something—answers your questions. The herb-doctor gets the miser right where he wants him by calling him a philosopher. Being a philosopher is not what the miser wants to be; he fancies himself a practical man and assumes that a practical man is the opposite of a philosopher. (We beg to differ, but whatever.) The herb-doc pulls the old switcheroo on the miser and puts down the all-important questions of "What's in this medicine and why?" by saying that that's what a philosopher would want to know. Healing, apparently, is all about faith and confidence, not knowledge—at least according to the herb-doctor.
Quote 3
No sooner was the pair spied by the herb-doctor, than with a cheerful air, both arms extended like a host's, he advanced, and taking the child's reluctant hand, said, trippingly: "On your travels, ah, my little May Queen? Glad to see you. What pretty moccasins. Nice to dance in." Then with a half caper sang—
"Hey diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle;
The cow jumped over the moon.Come, chirrup, chirrup, my little robin!"
Which playful welcome drew no responsive playfulness from the child, nor appeared to gladden or conciliate the father; but rather, if anything, to dash the dead weight of his heavy-hearted expression with a smile hypochondriacally scornful. (17, 10-13)
Okay, this is slightly more complicated than your average battle-of-the-sexes stuff. First off, the herb-doctor is being kind of fake in order to get the daughter to be on his team, but soon his masculinity is evaluated against the woodsy father's. While the father is serious, the herb-doctor is jolly and sings a sappy tune to the little girl. In light of the father's grim mood and the daughter's beautifully angst-ridden disgust, the herb-doctor is made into a ridiculous figure. The message? Don't let yourself be too chipper, because your irreverence just might threaten your masculinity. Maybe.
Quote 4
"Are there none here who feel in need of help, and who, in accepting such help, would feel that they, in their time, have given or done more than may ever be given or done to them? Man or woman, is there none such here?"
The sobs of the woman were more audible, though she strove to repress them. While nearly every one's attention was bent upon her, a man of the appearance of a day-laborer, with a white bandage across his face, concealing the side of the nose, and who, for coolness' sake, had been sitting in his red-flannel shirt-sleeves, his coat thrown across one shoulder, the darned cuffs drooping behind—this man shufflingly rose, and, with a pace that seemed the lingering memento of the lock-step of convicts, went up for a duly-qualified claimant. (18, 27-28)
We've got not one, but two women in this scene. It's kind of a big deal. We're going the figure-out-masculinity-by-contrasting-it-against-representations-of-feminitity route, and this one is subtle business. Let's set the scene: the herb-doctor walks back into a room he left earlier. He was kind of laughed out of it because everyone thought his medicine must be rubbish. Now he's back, and he's offering up money for anyone who needs it (though this could just be a ploy to garner goodwill). Anyway, what we want to pay attention to is the crowd.
Just before these lines, one woman gets shamed into not accepting the charity because the rest of the crowd doesn't believe she deserves it. Why? They disapprove of her outfit. Lame. Okay, but right here, there's a weeping widow who ostensibly needs the money. She doesn't get it, either. Is it because she'll be stared down by the crowd, too? Is it because she has too much pride? Jury is out.
Who does get the money? A man whose day-laborer status introduces class into the tricky business of how Melville's text explores being a man. The dude's been injured, and he steps up to receive the cash as if it's been rightfully his all along. He's got a walk that seems to be a "lingering memento of the lock-step of convicts." Is this supposed to make him seem less trustworthy because of a supposed criminal past? Is this to show he's been reformed? We don't know.
What we do know is that nobody stares him into submission. Nobody even tries. He gets to claim the money when two women were denied. This scene demands that we try to assess who is deserving of money. Make no mistake, this moment is majorly complicated.