Am/u°ne;Sarm'}       The  History  of  Dover  s  Powder.  339 
then  the  apothecary  surgeons  rode  in  their  chaises,  while  the  doctors 
walked,  and  that  the  former  were  generally  first  consulted  when  the 
choice  of  a  family  physician  was  to  be  made.  Mercury  had  at  this 
time  an  unrestrained  use — perhaps  abuse  would  be  a  better  word — 
and  much  severe  public  stricture  was  made  upon  the  fact.  Crude 
quicksilver  was  administered,  and  Dover  was  a  warm  advocate  of 
its  use — in  fact,  he  was  called  the  quicksilver  doctor.  One  Captain 
Henry  Coit,  a  patient  of  Dover,  took  an  ounce  and  a  quarter  of 
crude  mercury  daily,  until  he  had  used  more  than  two  pounds 
weight !  Dover  professed  to  believe  that  mercury  freed  the 
patient  from  all  vermicular  diseases,  opened  all  obstructions,  and 
made  a  pure  balsam  of  the  blood.  It  is  quite  possible  its  ponder- 
osity and  gravity  carried  it  unchanged  entirely  through  the  intestinal 
processes,  and  it  may  have  had  the  merit  of  utility — that  is,  it  could 
be  used  on  another  patient  after  its  exit  from  the  previous  one.  The 
doctors  and  apothecaries  were  at  loggerheads.  Dover  said  the  best  way 
to  affront  the  latter  was  to  order  too  little  physic — each  patient  being 
deemed  to  be  worth  a  certain  sum  to  the  dispenser.  The  apothecaries 
discriminated  in  their  preferences  among  physicians — more  natural, 
perhaps,  than  politic — generally  favoring  those  who  would  write  the 
longest  and  most  numerous  prescriptions ;  so  that,  between  drug- 
ging and  expense,  the  lot  of  the  invalid  has  at  no  time  been  envi- 
able. Nor  need  we  attempt  to  conceal  the  fact  that  the  relations 
between  prescriber  and  dispenser  have  never  been  long  harmonious, 
each  by  turn  exercising  a  lion-like  aggressiveness,  and  neither 
evincing  a  lamb-like  submissiveness.  But  we  must  come  to  the 
romance  of  our  narrative.  In  1708,  Dover  joined  the  company  of  a 
group  of  Bristol  merchants  in  a  scheme  to  fit  out  two  vessels  for 
privateering,  or  piracy,  in  the  South  Seas.  Dover,  it  seems,  went 
as  captain,  and  the  voyage  was  eminently  successful  in  booty.  They 
took,  in  various  reprisals  from  the  marauding,  thieving  Spaniards — 
the  then  buccaneers  of  the  high  seas — the  hoards  of  treasure  and 
gold  which  they  in  turn  had  filched  from  the  native  Indians — the 
principle  of  might  applied  to  right.  The  expedition  returned  to 
Britain,  enriched  with  spoil,  the  treasure  amounting  to  ,£170,000 
sterling.  It  was  during  this  memorable  voyage  that  Dover,  landing 
with  some  of  his  crew  on  the  island  of  Juan  Fernandez,  discovered 
the  existence  of  Alexander  Selkirk — Robinson  Crusoe — in  his 
dreary  solitude  on  this  desert  shore.    Our  biographer  then  relates 
