And the following was sung upon ye Stage:
You Surgeons of London who puzzle your Pates,
To ride in your Coaches, and purchase Estates,
Give over, for Shame, for your Pride has a Fall,
And ye Doctress of Epsom has outdone you all.
What signifies Learning, or going to school,
When a Woman can do without Reason or Rule,
What puts you to Non-plus, and baffles your Art,
For Petticoat-Practice has now got the Start.
In Physick, as well as in Fashions, we find
The newest has always its Run with Mankind;
Forgot is the bustle ‘bout Taylor and Ward,
Now Mapp’s all ye Cry, and her Fame’s on Record.
Dame Nature has giv’n her a Doctor’s Degree,
She gets all ye Patients, and pockets the Fee;
So if you don’t instantly prove her a Cheat,
She’ll loll in her Chariot while you walk ye Street.’[105]
At this time she was at her acme—but if an anonymous writer in the Cornhill Magazine for March, 1873, p. 82, is to be believed, she died December, 1837, ‘at her lodgings near Seven Dials, so miserably poor, that the parish was obliged to bury her.’
In No. 572 of the Spectator, July 26, 1714,[106] is a very amusing article on the quacks of Queen Anne’s time:
‘There is scarce a city in Great Britain but has one of this tribe, who takes it into his protection, and on the market-day harangues the good people of the place with aphorisms and receipts. You may depend upon it he comes not there for his own private interest, but out of a particular affection to the town. I remember one of these public-spirited artists at Hammersmith, who told his audience that he had been born and bred there, and that, having a special regard for the place of his nativity, he was determined to make a present of five shillings to as many as would accept of it. The whole crowd stood agape and ready to take the doctor at his word; when, putting his hand into a long bag, as everyone was expecting his crown piece, he drew out a handful of little packets, each of which, he informed the spectators, was constantly sold at five shillings and sixpence, but that he would bate the odd five shillings to every inhabitant of that place; the whole assembly immediately closed with this generous offer, and took off all his physick, after the doctor had made them vouch for one another, that there were no foreigners among them, but that they were all Hammersmith men.
‘There is another branch of pretenders to this art, who, without either horse or pickle herring,[107] lie snug in a garret, and send down notice to the world of their extraordinary parts and abilities by printed bills and advertisements. These seem to have derived their custom from an eastern nation which Herodotus speaks of, among whom it was a law that whenever any cure was to be performed, both the method of the cure, and an account of the distemper, should be fixed in some public place; but, as customs will corrupt, these, our moderns, provide themselves with persons to attest the cure before they publish or make an experiment of the prescription. I have heard of a porter, who serves as a Knight of the post[108] under one of these operators, and, though he was never sick in his life, has been cured of all the diseases in the Dispensary. These are the men whose sagacity has invented elixirs of all sorts, pills and lozenges, and take it as an affront if you come to them before you have been given over by everybody else. Their medicines are infallible, and never fail of success; that is, of enriching the doctor, and setting the patient effectually at rest.
‘I lately dropt into a coffee-house at Westminster, where I found the room hung round with ornaments of this nature. There were Elixirs, Tinctures, the Anodyne Fotus, English Pills, Electuaries, and, in short, more remedies than I believe there are diseases. At the sight of so many inventions, I could not but imagine myself in a kind of arsenal or magazine, where a store of arms was deposited against any sudden invasion. Should you be attacked by the enemy sideways, here was an infallible piece of defensive armour to cure the pleurisy; should a distemper beat up your head-quarters, here you might purchase an impenetrable helmet, or, in the language of the artist, a cephalic tincture; if your main body be assaulted, here are various kinds of armour in case of various onsets. I began to congratulate the present age upon the happiness man might reasonably hope for in life, when death was thus in a manner defeated, and when pain itself would be of so short a duration, that it would just serve to enhance the value of pleasure.