The second project I shall mention was his sovereign remedy for the
worms, especially those in the spleen. The patient was to eat nothing
after supper for three nights; as soon as he went to bed, he was
carefully to lie on one side, and when he grew weary, to turn upon the
other. He must also duly confine his two eyes to the same object, and by
no means break wind at both ends together without manifest occasion.
These prescriptions diligently observed, the worms would void insensibly
by perspiration ascending through the brain.
A third invention was the erecting of a whispering-office for the public
good and ease of all such as are hypochondriacal or troubled with the
cholic, as likewise of all eavesdroppers, physicians, midwives, small
politicians, friends fallen out, repeating poets, lovers happy or in
despair, bawds, privy-counsellors, pages, parasites and buffoons, in
short, of all such as are in danger of bursting with too much wind. An
ass’s head was placed so conveniently, that the party affected might
easily with his mouth accost either of the animal’s ears, which he was to
apply close for a certain space, and by a fugitive faculty peculiar to
the ears of that animal, receive immediate benefit, either by eructation,
or expiration, or evomition.
Another very beneficial project of Lord Peter’s was an office of
insurance for tobacco-pipes, martyrs of the modern zeal, volumes of
poetry, shadows . . . and rivers, that these, nor any of these, shall
receive damage by fire. From whence our friendly societies may plainly
find themselves to be only transcribers from this original, though the
one and the other have been of great benefit to the undertakers as well
as of equal to the public.
Lord Peter was also held the original author of puppets and raree-shows,
the great usefulness whereof being so generally known, I shall not
enlarge farther upon this particular.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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