Pierre Babillard, French valet and pimp in ordinary to my lord Demure, was troubled with the Glosso-mania, or that epidemical disease of Normandy, the talking sickness. He not only prattled all night in his sleep, but his clack went incessantly all day long; the cook-maid and nurse were talk’d quite deaf by him; whereas his master labour’d under the contrary extreme, and by his good will wou’d not strike once in twenty four hours; by the most stupendous operation that ever was known, (for the transfusion of one animal’s blood into another, so much boasted of by the royal society, is not to be compared to it) I transfused some of the French valet’s loquacity into the noble peer, and some of the noble peer’s taciturnity into the French valet; so that now, to the great consolation of the family, my lord sometimes talks, and Monsieur Babillard sometimes holds his tongue.
Sir Blunder Dullman, professor of rhetorick, and orator to the ancient city of Augusta Trinobantum, had been troubled, ever from his infancy with that epidemical magistrate’s distemper, the Bos in Lingua; so that whenever he made any speeches, the gentlemen were ready to split their sides, and the ladies to bepiss themselves with laughing at the singularities of his discourse. By my Pulvis Cephalicus, I so far recover’d him, that he cou’d draw up his tropes and metaphors in good order, and harangue you twenty lines upon the stretch, without making above the same number of blunders. If he has since relapsed, ’tis no fault of mine, but he may e’en thank his city conversation for it.
Dinah Fribble, eldest daughter to Jonathan Fribble of Thames-street, tallow-chandler, was so enormously given to the language of old Babylon, that she would talk bawdy before her mother, her grandmother, and godmother; nay, name the two beastly monosyllables before the doctor and lecturer of the parish. Her father, one of the worshipful elders of Salters-hall, wondered how a child so religiously educated, fed from her cradle with the crumbs of comfort, and lull’d daily asleep with Hopkins and Sternhold, should labour under so obscene a dispensation. In short, I was sent for, pour’d some twenty drops of my Anti-Asmodean essence into her nostrils, and the next morning a huge thundering Priapus eleven inches long, came out of her left ear; she’s now perfectly recover’d, talks as piously, and behaves herself as gravely as the demurest female in the neighbourhood.
Daniel Guzzle, Inn-keeper in Southwark, by perpetual tippling with his customers, was so inordinately swell’d with a dropsy, that Sir John Falstaff, in Harry the fourth, was a meer skeleton to him. I tapp’d his Heidelburg-Abdomen, and so vast an inundation issued from him, that if the stream had continued a quarter of an hour longer, it would have overflowed the whole borough, and made a second cataclysm. He is now perfectly cured, is as slender as a beau that has been twice salivated for a shape; runs up the monument some half a score times every morning for his diversion, jumps thro’ a hoop, makes nothing of leaping over a five-barr’d gate; and the famous Mr. Barnes of Rotherhith has enter’d him into his company.
Obadiah Hemming, Taylor, at the sign of the Red-Wastcoat and Blazing-Star, near Tower-Hill, was troubled with so unmerciful a Ptisick, that no body in the family could sleep for him: I ply’d him with my Antitussient Pillula Pulmonaris, but without effect. I wondered how the devil my never-failing remedy disappointed me! cries I to him, honest friend, what may your name be? Obadiah Hemming, says he. Very well; and what parish do you live in; All-hallows-Barking. Oh, ho! I have now found out the secret how my pills came to miscarry; why, friend, thou hast a damn’d ptisical name, and livest in a confounded ptisical parish: come call thyself Obadiah Bowman, and get thee to Hampstead, Highgate, or any place but All-hallows-Barking, and I’ll insure thy recovery. He did so; and is so strangely improv’d upon it, that he is since chosen into St. Paul’s choir, and begins to rival Mr. Goslin and Mr. Elford.
Rebbecca Twist, Ribbon-Weaver, in Drum-Alley, Spittle Fields, aged 75, by drinking anniseed-robin, geneva, and other ungodly liquors, and smoaking mundungus, had so utterly decayed her natural heat, that she had lain bed-rid thirty years, and on my conscience a calenture would no more have warm’d her, than a farthing candle would roast a sirloin of beef. I made so entire a renovation of her with my Arcanum Helmontio-Glaubero-Paracelsianum, that she’s become another creature, out-talks the parson and midwife at every gossiping, dances to a miracle, never fails to give her attendance at all merry meetings; and no sooner hears the noise of a fiddle, but she frisks and capers it about, like a young hoyden of fifteen.
Nehemiah Conniver, one of the city reformers, was so totally deform’d with the Lepra Hypocritica, that never a barber, victualler, or taylor in the neighbourhood could live in quiet for him. To the admiration of all that knew him, I have so effectually cured him of this acid humour, that he will out-swear ten dragoons, go to a bawdy-house in the face of the sun; and out talk a score of midwives in natural philosophy.
Thus, gentlemen, you have my bill, and catalogue of cures, by which you’ll easily perceive that our internal world is only a counter-part of your’s, where hard words, impudence, and nonsense, delivered with a magisterial air, carry every thing before them. I should now according to the method proposed to myself, proceed to give you a short account of what memorable occurrences have lately happened in these Acherontic realms, but the vast crowds of visitants at my door are so obstreporous and troublesome, that I can conceal myself from them no longer. Be pleas’d, therefore, to accept of this imperfect relation in part of payment, and next month, when I shall have a better convenience of writing my thoughts at large, I will endeavour to give you full satisfaction. In the mean time, give me leave to assure you, that my highest ambition is to honour myself with the title of,
Gentlemen,
Your most obedient and
most humble Servant,
Giusippe Hanesio.