Meaning & Analysis
The proverb states that a person suffers from a lack of money (‘purse-sick’) and, unlike physical illness, there is no physician who can offer a cure for this financial malady.
Insights
Financial Distress as Illness
The proverb likens financial hardship to physical sickness, suggesting that poverty or debt is as debilitating as any bodily affliction, yet lacks a straightforward remedy.
Limits of Professional Help
It points to the inadequacy of conventional solutions—while doctors may cure bodily illness, there is no ready ‘physician’ for economic woes, underscoring the isolation and helplessness often felt in financial difficulty.
Material vs. Physical Health
Metaphorically, it contrasts the health of the body with the ‘health’ of one’s finances, wryly suggesting that one may be well in body but ‘sick’ in wallet—a condition just as impactful but less socially acknowledged.
Historical Attitudes to Money
The analogy between money troubles and disease reflects early modern anxieties about social status and solvency, when loss of wealth could mean literal ruin. The phrase encapsulates the era’s recognition that financial suffering was an affliction with dire consequences.
Literary Resonance
Shakespeare’s line about the ‘consumption of the purse’ and numerous period sources echo the trope of financial sickness, highlighting its recurrence as a theme in literature and popular speech.
Psychological Impact
By medicalizing poverty, the proverb reveals an awareness of the psychological toll of financial distress—shame, anxiety, and helplessness—thus anticipating modern understandings of the mental health effects of economic hardship.
Wry Social Commentary
The proverb’s irony underlines a broader social critique: society may offer remedies for physical ills but remains largely indifferent or powerless in the face of systemic poverty, pointing to gaps in communal care.
Rhetorical Devices
Metaphor
The entire proverb is an extended metaphor, equating lack of money with illness to evoke empathy and humor.
Irony
There is a sharp irony in seeking a ‘physician’ for a sick purse, highlighting the absurdity and helplessness of the situation.
Wordplay
The play on words between physical and financial health makes the proverb memorable and piquant, blurring categories in a witty manner.
Transcription
Quotations
How feel you your selfe in your purse? —In a manner alwaies ill at ease and faint.
To be well of ones head, but sick of ones purse, viz. to be half sick, which the Latin expresseth by, Aegrotare magis Crumena quam Corpore.
My bodie is sound, but my purse is sick—I lack money.
Shakespeare Citations
I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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