With these two agents St. John Long engaged to combat every form of disease--gout, palsy, obstructions of the liver, cutaneous affections; but the malady which he professed to have the most complete command over was consumption. His success in surrounding himself with patients was equal to his audacity. He took a large house in Harley Street, and fitted it up for the reception of people anxious to consult him; and for some seasons every morning and afternoon (from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.) the public way was blocked up with carriages pressing to his door. The old and the young alike flocked to him; but nine of his patients out of every ten were ladies. For awhile the foolish of every rank in London seemed to have but one form in which to display their folly. Needy matrons from obscure suburban villages came with their guineas to consult the new oracle; and ladies of the highest rank, fashion, and wealth, hastened to place themselves and their daughters at the mercy of a pretender's ignorance. Unparalleled were the scenes which the reception-rooms of that notorious house in Harley Street witnessed. In one room were two enormous inhalers, with flexible tubes running outwards in all directions, and surrounded by dozens of excited women--ladies of advanced years, and young girls giddy with the excitement of their first London season--puffing from their lips the medicated vapour, or waiting till a mouth-piece should be at liberty for their pink lips. In another room the great magician received his patients. Some he ordered to persevere in inhalation, others he divested of their raiment, and rubbed his miraculous liniment into their backs, between their shoulders or over their bosoms. Strange to say, these lavations and frictions--which invariably took place in the presence of third persons, nurses or invalids--had very different results. The fluid, which, as far as the eye could discern, was taken out of the same vessel, and was the same for all, would instantaneously produce on one lady a burning excoriation, which had in due course to be dressed with cabbage-leaves; but on another would be so powerless that she could wash in it, or drink it copiously, like ordinary pump-water, with impunity. "Yes," said the wizard, "that was his system, and such were its effects. If a girl had tubercles in her lungs, the lotion applied to the outward surface of her chest would produce a sore, and extract the virus from the organs of respiration. If a gentleman had a gouty foot, and washed it in this new water of Jordan, at the cost of a little temporary irritation the vicious particles would leave the affected part. But on any sound person who bathed in it the fluid would have no power whatever."