“Baxter vehemently and exaggeratedly denounced it as a breach of the sixth commandment. It produced catarrh, etc., and, in a word, was good for nothing but to despatch men out of the world.”
“If murder be sin, then dipping ordinarily in cold water over head is a sin.”
So much for Dr. Floyer vs. Baxter. Surely the latter ought to have been “dipped.”
A western paper of respectability is responsible for the statement, that an old lady followed up a bishop as he travelled through his diocese, in that vicinity, and was confirmed several times before detected.
“Why did you do such a remarkable deed?” asked the bishop. “Did you feel that your sins were so great as to require a frequent repetition of the ordinance?”
“O, no,” replied the old lady, complacently; “but I heerd say it was good for the rheumatiz.”
The bishop didn’t confirm her any more. She was really going to baptism as the voters go to the polls and vote in New York—“early and often.”
Old English Prescriptions.
The prescriptions and doses of the old English doctors were “stunning.”
Billy Atkins, a gout doctor of Charles II.’s time, who resided in the Old Bailey, did an immense business in his specialty. His remarkable wig and dress will find a place in our chapter on “Dress.” He made a nostrum on the authority of Swift, compounded of thirty different promiscuous ingredients.