“Yes. Now, if I was you, I should say to a friend, ‘Lend me a thou.,’ and then take a little shop, put it up in bottles, with three-halfpenny stamps, and advertise it well as the new patent medicine.”
“My dear Mr Poynter!”
“Hold hard, doctor, I haven’t done,” he cried, speaking in a hard, browbeating manner, as if he were giving orders. “Give it a spanking name, ‘Heal-all,’ or ‘Cure all;’ won’t do to say Kill-all eh? Haw, haw, haw!”
He burst into a coarse, loud laugh, and the doctor sank back in his chair, with his brows twitching slightly.
“Hold hard, I have it. Nothing like a good name for the fools who swallow everything. Get something out of one of your Greek and Latin physic-books—one of those words like hippocaustus or allegorus, or something they can’t understand.”
“I do not quite see the force of your argument, my dear Mr Poynter,” said the doctor blandly.
“Not see? Why, man, it would be patent medicine then, and no one could take it from you. Look at Hannodyne—good stuff, too, when you’ve got a headache in the morning—Government stamp, to imitate which is forgery!”
“But still, I—”
“Don’t see? Nonsense! Make a fortune. You want it. Patients pretty scarce, eh?”
He laughed again offensively, and the doctor winced, but kept up his bland smooth smile.