A curious illustration of the popular notion, that no man is guilty of any presumptuous sin, merely because, after lying down, at night, a notorious _pedler_ or _tinker_, he rises, in the morning, a _physician_, may be found, in the fact, that a watchmaker, who would laugh at a tailor, should he offer to repair a timekeeper, will readily confide in him, as a physician, for himself, his wife, or his child.
The most delicate female will sometimes submit her person, to the rubbings and manipulations of a blacksmith, in preference to following the prescriptions of a regular physician. A respectable citizen, with a pimple on the end of his nose, resembling, upon the testimony of a dozen old ladies, in the neighborhood, the identical cancer, of which every one of them was cured, by the famous Indian doctress, in Puzzlepot Alley, will, now and then, give his confidence to a lying, ignorant, half-drunken squaw, rather than to the most experienced member of the medical profession.
Suffer me to close this imperfect sketch, with the words of Lord Bacon, vol. i. page 120, Lond. 1824. "We see the weakness and credulity of men is such, as they will often prefer a mountebank or witch, before a learned physician. And therefore the poets were clear-sighted, in discerning this extreme folly, when they made Æsculapius and Circe brother and sister. For, in all times, in the opinion of the multitude, witches, and old women, and impostors have had a competition with physicians. And what followeth? Even this, that physicians say, to themselves, as Solomon expresseth it, upon a higher occasion, _If it befall to me, as befalleth to the fools, why should I labor to be more wise?_"
Van Butchell, the fistula-doctor, in London, some forty years ago, had a white horse, and he painted the animal, with many colored spots. He also wore an enormous beard. These tricks were useful, in attracting notice. In the Harleian Miscellany, vol. viii. page 135, Lond. 1810, there is a clever article on quackery, published in 1678, from which I will extract a passage or two, for the benefit of the fraternity: "Any sexton will furnish you with a skull, in hope of your custom; over which hang up the skeleton of a monkey, to proclaim your skill in anatomy. Let your table be never without some old musty Greek or Arabic author, and the fourth book of Cornelius Agrippa's Occult Philosophy, wide open, with half a dozen gilt shillings, as so many guineas, received, that morning for fees. Fail not to oblige neighboring ale-houses to recommend you to inquirers; and hold correspondence with all the nurses and midwives near you, to applaud your skill at gossippings. The admiring patient shall cry you up for a scholar, provided always your nonsense be fluent, and mixed with a disparagement of the college, graduated doctors, and book-learned physicians. Pretend to the cure of all diseases, especially those, that are incurable."