240 THE NECESSITY OF A REGISTRATION BILL. 
by assuming the title of “ Doctor,” and palming himself upon the 
public — he being of the same name — as being related to the great 
physician, it might improve his practice. Accordingly, without 
loss of time, he went to -the carpenter for a new board over his 
door, upon which, in large and golden capitals, he had inscribed — 
“ Dr. Sangrado, RELATED to the Physician next door.” The real 
“doctor” stepping, on the following morning, as was his daily 
custom, from his doorway into his carriage, by accident had his 
eye caught by the flaming new board of his neighbour; and, with 
tremendous double knock at the door underneath the said board, 
summoned the apothecary to his presence. “ Pray, sirrah ! how 
dare you blazon yourself to the world with such unparalleled ef- 
frontery and falsehood as a relative of mine, and betitle yourself 
Doctor, too ]” — To which enraged attack the cool and temperate re- 
ply of the neglected apothecary was, that he “ had discovered some 
distant relationship between their mutual progenitors ; and that as 
for the title of * Doctor’ he intended to maintain it upon his board 
and cards until the law compelled him to take it off.” In the plot 
of the farce, the ruse was said to answer : the apothecary’s business 
increased as a “ physician,” and he became a thriving character ; 
though it is not stated that any very great reverse of fortune befel 
the veritable doctor medicince. 
The same impositions have occurred in our own days, and still 
indeed do occur. Everybody knows that the great Sir Astley 
COOPER was by the lower orders, and by very many of the 
middling orders of people too, called “ Sir Ashley ,” or, more com- 
monly, plain “Ashley COOPER.” Empiricism, or rather impos- 
ture, speedily caught hold of this misnomer ; and the result was, a 
deluge of advertisements and chalkings-on-the-wall about Ashley 
Cooper’s pills and powders and consultations, & c. Since then 
we have had Dr. LoCOCK’S “ pulmonic wafers.” And in every 
town and village in the country, in the place of “farrier and cow- 
leech,” we now see placarded, “ VETERINARY” — often “ vitenary 
surgeon.” So are the public gulled, so are the faculty cheated 
out of their good names; for, lucklessly, we cannot in this matter, 
with the great dramatist, say 
“ What’s in a name 
