It was the books
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que foram os remedios indicados nos livros.
that it was the remedies prescribed in the books.
He credits the printed remedies, not himself.
The credit is handed to the page. It was not his skill that healed but 'os remedios indicados nos livros' — the remedies the books prescribed. José Dias makes himself a mere conduit, the man who read the right manual and followed it, and the modesty is real enough while also being convenient: if the books cured, then no title was ever needed, and the fraud dissolves.
There is something touchingly and comically bookish in this. His whole authority has always been secondhand learning, and here he says so outright, resting his cures on printed instructions rather than on any gift of his own. Machado, forever attentive to the borrowed knowledge of self-made experts, lets José Dias transfer his agency to a shelf of homeopathic volumes with the humility of a man who has found the perfect alibi.
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Dom Casmurro 5.38 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/domcasmurro/5.38/