n Roi; dans la medicine il n'ya que Charini." With
this he placed his hand on his heart, bowed, and drew himself up with a
look of the most glorious complacency. This exordium was received with
the most rapturous applause by the crowd, who, from having often seen
him in his progress through the kingdom, had known before that this was
_Charini himself_, the celebrated itinerant _worm doctor_. "Gentlemen,"
he then proceeded, "it has been the noble object of my life to
investigate the origin and causes of disease, and fortunate is it for
the world that it has been so. Attend, then, to my discoveries: Worms
are at the bottom of all disease,--they are the insidious, but prolific
authors of human misery; they are born in the cradle with the infant;
they descend into the grave with the aged. They begin, gentlemen, with
life, but they do not cease with death. Behold, gentlemen," he
continued, "the living and infallible proofs of my assertions,"
(pointing to the long rows of crystal bottles, filled with multitudes of
every kind of these vermin, of the most odious figures, which were
marshalled in horrible array on each side of him), "these, gentlemen,
are the worms which have been, by my art, extracted from my patients;
many of them are, as you see, invisible to the naked eye;" upon which he
held up a small phial of pure water. "Not a single disease is there, and
not a single part of the human body which has not its appropriate and
peculiar worm. There are those whose habitation is in the head;--there
are those which dwell only in the soles of the feet;--there are those
whose favourite haunts are in the seat of digestion;--there are those
(happy worms) which will consent to dwell only in the bosoms of the
fair. Even love," said he, assuming an air of most complacent softness,
and casting his eye tenderly over the female part of his audience, "even
love is not an exception; it is occasioned by the subtlest species of
worms; which insinuate themselves into the roots of the heart, and play
in peristaltic gambols round the seat of our affections. Painters,
gentlemen, have distinguished the God of Love by the doves with which he
is accompanied. He ought, more correctly, to have been depicted riding
upon that worm, to which he owes his triumphs. Behold," said he, holding
up a phial in which there was enclosed a worm of a light colour, "behold
the fatal love-worm, from which I have lately had the happiness to
deliver an interesting femal