Hath an Unicorn’s Horn that was found in the Deserts of Arabia, the Powder whereof does several wonderful Cures, whereof I was advised by several Doctors to Publish the same in Print; the Cures that it has done are as follow:
I have in my Travels, by the Virtues of this Powder, saved the Lives of several Gentlewomen in Child-Bed, which could not be Delivered before they took the Powder.
About October the Fifth, 1702, I was in the Town of Hampton, in the County of Gloucester, at Mr Gardners, at the Sign of the White-Hart, where I heard that one Mrs Webb was in Child-Bed and could not be Delivered, so that Doctor Farr of the said Town, the Midwife and all Women left her off for Dead, upon which I sent my Landlady with a little of this Powder, the Quantity whereof would lie upon a Six-pence, which the Gentlewoman took, and was Delivered in less than a Quarter of an Hour; Doctor Farr has given it under his Hand, and some other Gentlemen of the Town can testify, that this Powder was the saving of her Life (under God).
Likewise this Powder is a certain Cure for the Kings-Evil, when it breaks and runs: The Powder must be put on a Linnen Cloath and applied to the Place, and take as much as will lie on a Six-pence for two Mornings in warm Ale.
The College of Physitians in London, hearing of this Powder, they came to my Lodging, on purpose to see this Horn, and desired me to let them have some Experience to try if it would Expel Poyson, upon which they sent for two Dogs and Poysoned them both, and asked me if I could save one of them, whereupon I took a little Powder of this Horn in a Spoonful of Milk, and gave it to one of them, that which I gave it to was saved, and the other died in their Presence, after which the Doctors offered me a great Sum of Money for this Horn, which I was not willing to part with.
If there are any Gentlewomen desirous to Buy any of this Powder, I Sell it at Reasonable Rates, and it may be kept Ten Years and not lose its Virtue.
Finis.
In Queen Anne’s time, and during the first years of the Hanoverian succession, quackery does not seem to have impaired its professors’ positions in society, providing they had other claims to consideration, and even the most impudent impostors obtained rank and celebrity under circumstances which hardly seem possible. Listen to the following: “Sir William Read, originally a tailor or a cobbler, became progressively a mountebank and a quack doctor, and gained, in his case, the equivocal honour of knighthood from Queen Anne. He is said to have practised by ‘the light of nature:’ and though he could not read, he could ride in his own chariot, and treat his company with good punch out of a golden bowl. He had an uncommon share of impudence; a few scraps of Latin in his bills made the ignorant suppose him to be wonderfully learned. He did not seek his reputation in small places, but practised at that high seat of learning, Oxford; and in one of his addresses he called upon the Vice-Chancellor, University, and the City, to vouch for his cures—as, indeed, he did upon the people of the three kingdoms. Blindness vanished before him, and he even deigned to practise in other distempers; but he defied all competition as an oculist. Queen Anne and George I. honoured Read with the care of their eyes; from which one would have thought the rulers, like the ruled, as dark intellectually as Taylor’s (his brother quack) coach-horses were corporeally, of which it was said five were blind in consequence of their master having exercised his skill upon them.” Dr Radcliffe mentions this humbug as “Read the mountebank, who has assurance enough to come to our table up-stairs at Garraway’s, swears he’ll stake his coach and six horses, his two blacks, and as many silver trumpets, against a dinner at Pontack’s.” Read died at Rochester, May 24, 1715. After Queen Anne had knighted him and Dr Hannes, the following lines were published:—
The Queen, like Heav’n, shines equally on all,
Her favours now without distinction fall:
Great Read and slender Hannes, both knighted, show
That none their honours shall to merit owe.
That Popish doctrine is exploded quite,
Or Ralph had been no duke and Read no knight.
That none may virtue or their learning plead,
This has no grace and that can hardly read.
The Ralph referred to here is the first Duke of Montague, a title that has already appeared conspicuously in these pages. In the matter of the bestowal of titles, especially knighthoods and baronetcies, we have no particular reason to congratulate ourselves now, but we have certainly improved since the days when rank was sold or bestowed upon the most audacious adventurers. So far as merit is concerned, we are, however, much in the same position as we were in the days of Read and Ralph; but ability always was an unmarketable commodity, and now it seems to secure its unhappy possessors the decided enmity of those more favoured beings whose dependence is upon patronage, and not upon personal powers, and who, in humble imitation of the fox of fable, affect to despise any such common thing as cleverness. And unfortunately this observation has a far wider bearing than on the mere bestowal of titles. It refers to things generally, and to the means by which many clever men are deprived of their subsistence, and driven to the wall by the nepotism and friendly feeling so often exercised in favour of the most arrant impostors, or on behalf of those who are just clever enough to conceal their ignorance and inability, to rob others of their ideas, or to foist second-hand notions upon a credulous and misjudging public.