world generally something to look at, hence so few pretenders
to it; but physic buries all its blemishes with the unfortunate victim.

The country, even in this age of progressing wisdom, is deluged with
quack medicines, which credulous people say are not directed against the
constitution, but only against the pocket, and that they are too insipid
to do either good or harm; but were this the case, there would have been
no occasion for the exemplary punishments with which it is recorded
quacks of all sorts have at various times been visited. Be it known,
there can be no such thing invented by man as an universal remedy to
prevent or cure all kinds of diseases; because that which would agree
with one constitution would disagree with another differently organised;
and a quack nostrum, such as we see daily advertised, may certainly
agree at one stage of a disease, but might go far in killing the patient
at another. Besides, all these boasted specifics have been found to be
either inert, ineffectual, or dangerous, and every pretender to them, in
times less enlightened by the general march of intellect, has been
convicted either of gross ignorance or dishonesty. No one can vouch with
certainty for any particular kind of medicine,--that it will agree with
this or that individual, until acquainted with his peculiar
constitution; consequently it is the height of absurdity to prescribe
physic for a man without a knowledge of such circumstances to direct
him. Amulets, talismans, charms, and incantations, are innocent and
innoxious, and may impose only on credulity without any other untoward
consequence, leaving the patient in the same state in which he was
found; but so much cannot be said for quacks and quack-medicines which
frequently remove their deluded victims far beyond the reach of either
physic or philosophy.

Butler is said to be the author of the following character of a quack;
and who can read it without being astonished at the prophetic
intelligence with which it abounds, and which, unfortunately, admits of
a too close analogy with some very recent and untoward events, in the
annals of modern empiricism. "He is a medicine-monger, probationer of
receipts, and Doctor Epidemic; he is perpetually putting his medicines
upon their trial, and very often finds them GUILTY OF MANSLAUGHTER, but
still they have some trick or other to come off, and avoid burning by
the hand of the hangman. He prints his trials of skill, and challe