the functions of the apothecary, just as the apothecary presumed to discharge the offices of physician. It was not derogatory to the dignity of a leading physician, in the reign of Charles the Second, to keep a shop, and advertise the wares vended in it, announcing in the same manner their prices. Dr. Mead realized large sums by the sale of worthless nostrums. And only a few years since, a distinguished Cambridge physician, retaining as an octogenarian the popularity he had achieved as a young man, in one of our eastern counties, used to sell his "gout tincture"--a secret specific against gout--at so many shillings per bottle. In many respects the general practitioner of this century would consider his professional character compromised if he adopted the customs generally in vogue amongst the physicians of the last. CHAPTER VI. QUACKS. "So then the subject being so variable, hath made the art by consequence more conjectural; an art being conjectural hath made so much the more place to be left for imposture. For almost all other arts and sciences are judged by acts or masterpieces, as I may term them, and not by the successes and events. The lawyer is judged by the virtue of his pleading, and not by the issue of the cause. The master of the ship is judged by the directing his course aright, and not by the fortune of the voyage. But the physician, and perhaps the politician, hath no particular acts demonstrative of his ability, but is judged most by the event; which is ever but as it is taken: for who can tell, if a patient die or recover, or if a state be preserved or ruined, whether it be art or accident? and therefore many times the impostor is prized, and the man of virtue taxed. _Nay, we see the weakness and credulity of men is such, as they will often prefer a mountebank or witch before a learned physician._"--Lord Bacon's "_Advancement of Learning_." The history of quackery, if it were written on a scale that should include the entire number of those frauds which may be generally classed under the head of humbug, would be the history of the human race in all ages and climes. Neither the benefactors nor the enemies of mankind would escape mention; and a searching scrutiny would show that dishonesty has played as important, though not as manifest, a part in the operations of benevolence, as in the achievements of the devil. But a more confined use of the word must satisfy us on the present occasion. We are not about to enter on a philosophic inquiry into the causes that contributed to the success of Mahomet and Cromwell, but only to chronicle a few of the most humorous facts connected with the predecessors of Dr. Townsend and Mr. Morrison.