"Feed a Cold, Starve a Fever"

    A nice antithetical device, right?  Opposites or contrasts facing one another.  Feeding versus starving; a cold's mild, a fever...?  Yet "device" is almost a demeaning word to me when it comes to literature and language.  Yes, it's a way to make words memorable.  "Ask not . . ." You can say the rest.   

     BUT REALLY, it's a way of conceiving and relating, of noticing things in tension with one another in real life, in one's experience and sight.  So "device" is small-minded compared to the capacity to see, understand, and express one's world with language that illuminates it.

     Word and Phrase Origins by Robert Hendrickson says that the Greek "father of medicine" Hippocrates is credited with the "prescription" but that "several doctors" have recently doubted its scientific truthfulness.  Personally, I'm with Hippocrates.