"Your Majesty will pardon me," replied the bulky duke, "for I generally walk two or three times round my cousin every morning." Sir Theodore Mayerne, who, though he was the most eminent physician of his time, did not disdain to write "Excellent and Well-Approved Receipts in Cookery, with the best way of Preserving," was killed by tavern wine. He died, after returning from supper in a Strand hotel; his immediate friends attributing his unexpected death to the quality of the beverage, but others, less charitable, setting it down to the quantity. Not many years ago, about a score surgeons were dining together at a tavern, when, about five minutes after some very "particular port" had been sent round for the first time, they all fell back in their chairs, afflicted in various degrees with sickness, vertigo, and spasm. A more pleasant sight for the waiters can hardly be conceived. One after one the gentlemen were conveyed to beds or sofas. Unfortunately for the startling effect which the story would otherwise have produced, they none of them expired. The next day they remembered that, instead of relishing the "particular port," they had detected a very unpleasant smack in it. The black bottles were demanded from the trembling landlord, when chemical analysis soon discovered that they had been previously used for fly-poison, and had not been properly cleansed. A fine old crust of such a kind is little to be desired. It would perhaps have been well had old Butler (mentioned elsewhere in these volumes) met with a similar mishap, if it had only made him a less obstinate frequenter of beer-shops. He loved tobacco, deeming it "A physician Good both for sound and sickly; 'Tis a hot perfume That expels cold Rheume, And makes it flow down quickly." It is on record that he made one of his patients smoke twenty-five pipes at a sitting. But fond though he was of tobacco, he was yet fonder of beer. He invented a drink called "Butler's Ale," afterwards sold at the Butler's Head, in Mason's Alley, Basinghall Street. Indeed, he was a sad old scamp. Nightly he would go to the tavern, and drink deeply for hours, till his maid-servant, old Nell, came between nine and ten o'clock and _fetched_ him home, scolding him all the way for being such a sot. But though Butler liked ale and wine for himself, he thought highly of water for other people. When he occupied rooms in the Savoy, looking over the Thames, a gentleman afflicted with an ague came to consult him. Butler tipped the wink to his servants, who flung the sick man, in the twinkling of an eye, slap out of the window into the river. We are asked to believe that "the surprise absolutely cured" the patient of his malady.