Happy Birthday, kesh!

perfect crisis
Among physicians, that which frees the patient perfectly and entirely from the distemper, and is either salutary or deadly.

--Nathaniel Bailey's Etymological Dictionary, 1749

Some have used the word [crisis] to signify only the favorable changes which supervene in disease; others, for the change going on in the acme or violence of the disease. From Greek diacrisis, judgement.

--Robley Dunglison's Dictionary of Medical Science, 1844

Feast Day of St. Luke,
a patron of physicians. In the mid-nineteenth century, medical doctors enjoyed neither the prestige nor the financial independence that their modern counterparts have today. The following excerpt of a curious help-wanted ad was found in a London newspaper from that era: "Wanted, for a family who have bad health: a sober, steady person, in the capacity of doctor, surgeon, apothecary, and man-midwife. He must occasionally act as butler, and dress hair and wigs. He will be required sometimes to read prayers, and to preach a sermon every Sunday."