RHUBARB PILL.—The same. She’s in a desperate way.
COUNTRYMAN.—Ees. Dr. Russell says it’s all owing to your nasty nosdrums.
RHUBARB PILL.—Doctor Russell’s a—never mind. I say she is very bad, and I AM the only man that can cure her.
COUNTRYMAN—Then out wi’it, doctor—what will?
RHUBARB PILL.—Wait till I’m regularly called in.
COUNTRYMAN.—But suppose she dies in the meantime?
RHUBARB PILL.—That’s her fault. I won’t do anything by proxy. I must direct my own administration, appoint my own nurses for the bed-chamber, have my own herbalists and assistants, and see Doctor Russell’s “purge” thrown out of the window. In short, I must be regularly called in. Balaam, blow the trumpet.
[Balaam blows the trumpet, the crowd shout, and the Doctor bows gracefully, with one hand on his heart and the other in his breeches pocket. At the end of the applause he commences singing].
I am called Doctor Pill, the political quack,
And a quack of considerable standing and note;