Dr. Diafoirus

in Molière’s Malade Imaginaire. A man of fossilised ideas, who, like the monk, refused to change his time - honoured mumpsĭmus (q.v.), for the new-fangled sumpsĭmus. Dr. Diafoirus used to say, what was good enough for his forefathers was good enough for their posterity, and he had no patience with the modern fads about the rotundity of the earth, its motion round the sun, the circulation of the blood, and all such stuff.

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