John Marten, with his "Attila of the Gout," and specifick, seemed determined in 1712, to expel that disorder from every human body in the Kingdom. Those who in 1807 read his advertisement, and are not thenceforward converts, must be stubborn unbelievers indeed. "I should be wanting (saith Mr. Marten) as well to the publick as myself, did I not reveal the _stupendious_ effects of my specifick in the gout, which daily experience more and more confirms. And whatever mean opinion any who are strangers to its excellency may entertain of it, either through unbelief, or being prejudiced by those whose interest it is to explode it; let them remember, _I tell_ them (as will many reputable people I will refer them to who have tried it), that if they ever expect certain and speedy relief, without the least detriment to their healths, they _must_ have it. I say they _must_, because the surprising benefit all receive by it indicates that nothing else _can_ more intimately dilute, and friendly and instantly obtrude and subdue by its soft balmy alterative nature, the acrimony of the humours that distend and torture the joints, and gently lead them away by urine, the only sensible operation it has. And as it is a medicine that will make its own way, it cannot but come (by degrees) to be as universally used and approved of in that distemper, as the Jesuits' bark is for agues, if not more; for none that shall drink it in time will ever be confined a day with the gout, nor others continue in pain an hour after drinking it, though they have lain for weeks together upon the _wreck_. Any may be further satisfied, and have all objections answered, _by word of mouth_, or by consulting the book I lately published, intituled, "The Attila of the Gout," being a peculiar account of that distemper, in which _the vanity of all_ that has hitherto been writ and practised to remove it, and an infallible method to cure it, are demonstrated; with ample testimonies of patients cured by John Marten, Surgeon, in Hatton-garden." I have before observed, that every profession has its Quacks, or persons who deviate from established rules. Such was the _Quack writer_ who inserted the ensuing advertisement in the Evening Post of January 22, 1717. "Whereas a certain pretender to Penmanship has, in an ill_e_terate manner, _fell_ upon my late performance, let him know _I look down upon him_, yet thus give him his answer: if I did keep monsters for my diversion, that does not affect me in my art; and it is well known that I have not now a deformed creature in my house, which is more than he can say _while he is within doors_. I pass by the unworthy reflections on my N and O, which I could return upon his R and T; but his own ink will blacken him enough, while it appears in his own irregular scrawls. While Cross of Paul's shines in the middle sky, _Thy_ name shall _stink_, but _mine_ shall never die."