Wisdom of the ancients

Re-reading Plato's Republic for my Utopia class this semester and came upon this, which I paid less attention to when I first read it. The passage contrasts the way Asclepius treated diseas and the way the moderns (of Plato's day) treated diseases of the wealthy.  Asclepius treated the immediate symptoms (of a wound or an illness) with a straightforward treatment, a bandage or an emetic, and sent the warrior or the worker back into action; if the treatment didn't take and he died, well, he was out of his misery.

But a doctor named Herodicus had a new plan for a more self-indulgent age "by making his dying a lengthy process:"

"Always tending his mortal illness, he was, it seems, unable to cure it, so he lived out his life under medical treatment...  If he departed even a little from his accustomed regimen, he became completely worn out, but because his skill made dying difficult, he lived into his old age."   This treatment, suitable only for those wealthy enough not to need to work, involved prescribing "a regimen, drawing off a little here and pouring in a little there, in order to make their life a prolonged misery."  

I read the other day of  a new drug for pancreatic cancer, one of the worst, that held the promise of prolonging life.  It seemed likely to prolong life for as much as two months.  This progress came as a result of a years-long research effort. Two more months hooked up to your machines in the hospital, "drawing off a little here, pouring in a little there" -- well I know that there are reasons for some to want and very much need an additional two months, but "prolonging life" in this fashion wouldn't have pleased Plato or Asclepius much.  Or me.