"Thirdly, a convenient lodging, not forgetting a hatch at the door; a chamber hung with Dutch pictures, or looking-glasses, belittered with empty bottles, gallipots, and vials filled with tapdroppings, or fair water, coloured with saunders. Any sexton will furnish your window with a skull, in hope of your custom; over which hang up the skeleton of a monkey, to proclaim your skill in anatomy.
"Fourthly, let your table be never without some old musty Greek or Arabick author, and the 4th book of Cornelius Agrippa's 'Occult Philosophy,' wide open to amuse spectators; with half-a-dozen of gilt shillings, as so many guineas received that morning for fees.
"Fifthly, fail not to oblige neighbouring 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 directions go on to advise loquacity and impudence, qualities which quacks of all times and kinds have found most useful. But in cases where the practitioner has an impediment in his speech, or cannot by training render himself glib of utterance, he is advised to persevere in a habit of mysterious silence, rendered impressive by grave nods of the head.
When Dr. Pulsefeel was tired of London, or felt a want of country air, he concentrated his powers on the pleasant occupation of fleecing rustic simplicity. For his journeys into the provinces he provided himself with a stout and fast-trotting hack—stout, that it might bear without fatigue weighty parcels of medicinal composition; and fleet of foot, so that if an ungrateful rabble should commit the indecorum of stoning their benefactor as an impostor (a mishap that would occasionally occur), escape might be effected from the infatuated and excited populace. In his circuit the doctor took in all the fairs, markets, wakes, and public festivals; not, however, disdaining to stop an entire week, or even month, at an assize town, where he found the sick anxious to benefit by his wisdom.
His plan of making acquaintance with a new place was to ride boldly into the thickest crowd of a fair or market, with as much speed as he could make without imperilling the lives of by-standers; and then, when he had checked his steed, inform all who listened that he had come straight from the Duke of Bohemia, or the most Serene Emperor of Wallachia, out of a desire to do good to his fellow-creatures. He was born in that very town,—yes, that very town in which he then was speaking, and had left it when an orphan child of eight years of age, to seek his fortune in the world. He had found his way to London, and been crimped on board a vessel bound for Morocco, and so had been carried off to foreign parts. His adventures had been wonderful. He had visited the Sultan and the Great Mogul. There was not a part of the Indies with which he was not familiar. If any one doubted him, let his face be regarded, and his bronze complexion bear witness of the scorching suns he had endured. He had cured hundreds—ay, thousands—of emperors, kings, queens, princes, margravines, grand duchesses, and generalissimos, of their diseases. He had a powder which would stay the palsy, jaundice, hot fever, and cramps. It was expensive; but that he couldn't help, for it was made of pearls, and the dried leaves of violets brought from the very middle of Tartary; still he could sell a packet of the medicine for a crown—a sum which would just pay him back his outlaid money, and leave him no profit. But he didn't want to make money of them. He was their fellow-townsman; and in order to find them out and cure them he had refused offers of wealth from the king of Mesopotamia, who wanted him to accept a fortune of a thousand gold pieces a month, tarry with the Mesopotamians, and keep them out of Death's clutches. Sometimes this harangue was made from the back of a horse; sometimes from a rude hustings, from which he was called mountebank. He sold all kinds of medicaments: dyes for the hair, washes for the complexion, lotions to keep young men youthful; rings which, when worn on the fore-finger of the right hand, should make a chosen favourite desperately in love with the wearer, and when worn on the same finger of the left hand, should drive the said favourite to commit suicide. Nothing could surpass the impudence of the fellow's lies, save the admiration with which his credulous auditors swallowed his assertions. There they stood,—stout yeomen, drunken squires, merry peasant girls, gawky hinds, gabbling dames, deeming themselves in luck's way to have lived to see such a miracle of learning. Possibly a young student home from Oxford, with the rashness of inexperience, would smile scornfully, and in a loud voice designate the pretender a quack—a quacksalvar (kwabzalver), from the liniment he vended for the cure of wens. But such an interruption, in ninety and nine cases out of every hundred, was condemned by the orthodox friends of the young student, and he was warned that he would come to no good if he went on as he had begun—a contemptuous unbeliever, and a mocker of wise men.
The author of the "Discourse de l'Origine des Mœurs, Fraudes, et Impostures des Ciarlatans, avec leur Découverte, Paris, 1662," says, "Premièrement, par ce mot de Ciarlatans, j'entens ceux que les Italiens appellent Saltambaci, basteleurs, bouffons, vendeurs de bagatelles, et generalement toute autre personne, laquelle en place publique montée en banc, à terre, ou à cheval, vend medecines, baumes, huilles ou poudres, composées pour guerir quelque infirmité, louant et exaltant sa drogue, avec artifice, et mille faux sermens, en racontant mille et mille merveilles.
"Mais c'est chose plaisante de voir l'artifice dont se servent ces medecins de banc pour vendre leur drogue, quand avec mille faux sermens ils affirment d'avoir appris leur secret du roi de Dannemarc, au d'un prince de Transilvanie."
The great quack of Charles the Second's London was Dr. Thomas Saffold. This man (who was originally a weaver) professed to cure every disease of the human body, and also to foretell the destinies of his patients. Along Cheapside, Fleet-street, and the Strand, even down to the sacred precincts of Whitehall and St. James's, he stationed bill-distributors, who showered prose and poetry on the passers-by—just as the agents (possibly the poets) of the Messrs. Moses cast their literature on the town of Queen Victoria. When this great benefactor of his species departed this life, on May the 12th, 1691, a satirical broadsheet called on the world to mourn for the loss of one—