from these
horrible pains in my stomach and head. Can you give me nothing to make
me pass one week--but one week, in tolerable ease, that I may die like a
man, if I must die!

But, Doctor, I am yet a young man; in the prime of my years--youth is a
good subject for a physician to work upon--Can you do nothing--nothing at
all for me, Doctor?

Alas! Sir, replied his physician, you have been long in a bad way. I
fear, I fear, nothing in physic can help you!

He was then out of all patience: What, then, is your art, Sir?--I have
been a passive machine for a whole twelvemonth, to be wrought upon at the
pleasure of you people of the faculty.--I verily believe, had I not taken
such doses of nasty stuff, I had been now a well man--But who the plague
would regard physicians, whose art is to cheat us with hopes while they
help to destroy us?--And who, not one of you, know any thing but by
guess?

Sir, continued he, fiercely, (and with more strength of voice and
coherence, than he had shown for several hours before,) if you give me
over, I give you over.--The only honest and certain part of the art of
healing is surgery. A good surgeon is worth a thousand of you. I have
been in surgeons' hands often, and have always found reason to depend
upon their skill; but your art, Sir, what is it?--but to daub, daub,
daub; load, load, load; plaster, plaster, plaster; till ye utterly
destroy the appetite first, and the constitution afterwards, which you
are called in to help. I had a companion once, my dear Belford, thou
knewest honest Blomer, as pretty a physician he would have made as any
in England, had he kept himself from excess in wine and women; and he
always used to say, there was nothing at all but the pick-pocket parade
in the physician's art; and that the best guesser was the best physician.
And I used to believe him too--and yet, fond of life, and fearful of
death, what do we do, when we are taken ill, but call ye in? And what
do ye do, when called in, but nurse our distempers, till from pigmies you
make giants of them? and then ye come creeping with solemn faces, when ye
are ashamed to prescribe, or when the stomach won't bear its natural
food, by reason of your poisonous potions,--Alas, I am afraid physic can
do no more for him!--Nor need it, when it has brought to the brink of the
grave the poor wretch who placed all his reliance in your cursed slops,
and the flattering hopes you gave him.

The doctor was out of coun