CHAPTER XII 



AMUSING RECEIPTS FOR THE BITE 

 OF A MAD DOG 



From the Hound Book, again, I extract the quaint Pre- 

 scriptions which follow. 



Truly our ancestors were valiant men ! For surely 

 " Scrap 'd Pewter " strikes one as being a curious ingredient 

 wherewith to compose physic for a poisoned system — but 

 perhaps the Strong Ale and Treacle may have had a good 

 deal to do with rendering it, if not wholly innocuous, at any 

 rate more or less digestible. And, as regards Doctor Mead's 

 Receipt — he, by the way, was the Duke's medical adviser for 

 many years — it is evidciit that he relied largely upon the 

 efficacy of cold water as a panacea for the disorders of his 

 day. Well — perhaps he was right I For there are those 

 that darkly assert (and low be it whispered) that, in spite of 

 the glamour and romance with which we love to envelop the 

 days of powder and patches, a bath of any sort was such a 

 rarity that the mere fact of prescribing a cold bath daily for 

 a month would have been sufficient in itself to terrify any 

 invalid into rude health, without any further demand upon 

 the weird nostrums of the apothecary of the period. 



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