MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 
tell him that Old Nick will have him 
ere three weeks are past.’—The 
person went home, and, as the story 
goes, died within the time, to com- 
plete his friend’s prediction. 
To some court-iady, who was 
much oppressed with a nervous 
complaint, then called Vapours, who 
asked him what she was to do to 
get rid of them, he said, ‘* Your 
Grace must either eat and drink 
less, take exercise, take physic, or 
be sick.”” 
_ It has always been found of great 
use to physicians to be of some sect 
in religion: he is in general pretty 
sure of those that belong to it, and 
to some other patients out of curio- 
sity. He should be a Catholic, a 
Presbyterian, a Quaker, a Sande- 
manian, a Swedenborgian, or a Jew, 
(in this country, indeed, he may 
pick and chuse)., The ‘hee and thou 
of the Jate Dr. John Fothergill, of 
London, was supposed to be worth 
two thousand pounds a year to him 
at Jeast. A physician (if be hap- 
pens to be sent for by a nobleman 
or a lady of quality) should never 
cease telling his poor plebeian pa- 
tients of his being called in by a 
person of that rank. He should 
tell his wondering patients of the 
compliments that were paid him 
on his skill by this very discerning 
person; and should mix up some 
anecdotes of the great family for 
his patients with as much nicety as 
he would compose a box of pills, 
It has oftentimes been of use to a 
physician to give good dinners and 
suppers, and card-parties and balls 
at bis house; the allure of good 
cheer and amusement is very often 
as good a bait for a patient as a 
May-fly is fora trout. If, however, 
he wants immediate practice, and 
does not very much care whether 
447 
it is continued or not, a pamphlet 
atiacking some ancient axiom in 
medicine or in diet, or the mere 
dressing up old doctrines in a new 
manner and in a new stile, will do 
extremely well. 
A very celebrated broehure upon 
health, written some years ago, 
brought into its author’s pocket, in 
three months only, one thousand 
guineas—the Doctor, however, made 
a full stop there ;—and an excellent 
physician at Bath (then the father 
of the waters) said, that in conse- 
quence of the excessive temperance 
into which many foolish persons 
had too suddenly thrown themselves 
from the contrary extreme, the sa- 
lutary springs (over which he pre- 
sided) were, in the year in which 
this pamphlet came out, more fre- 
quented than he had ever known 
them. So wonderfully sagacious is 
crude and inexperimental theory, 
and so fatal at last to the Doctor as 
well as his patient. 
With Eton and Westminster, and 
classical persons, the idea of a physi- 
cian’s being a good scholar, has great 
weight: as if the putting together 
with difficulty in a particular lan- 
guage, what is perhaps not worth 
telling’ in any, dispheyed much 
strength of thinking or aeuteness of 
mind. This is, however, thought 
of so much consequence by some 
physicians in England, long after 
they have quitted their classical] pur- 
suits, that they pay some indigent 
scholar to put their thoughts inte 
elegant Latin for them. 
So much for the arts, not the art 
of physic !—that art, so complicated, 
so difficult, so useful and honourable, 
when practised with skill and imie- 
grity, that the rant of Pliny respect- 
ing it is bardly byperbolical, ‘* Dais 
primum inventores suos assignavit 
medicina 
