I cannot doubt, that in 1789, there were quacks, about town, who could not contrive to get their names inserted, in the same page, with the regular physicians. I cannot believe, however, that they bore any proportion to the unprincipled and ignorant impostors, at the present time. In the "Massachusetts Centinel," of Sept. 21, 1785, is the following advertisement--"_John Pope, who, for eighteen years past, has been noted for curing Cancers, schrophulous Tumours, fetid and phagedenic Ulcers, &c., has removed into a house, the north corner of Orange and Hollis Street, South End, Boston, where he proposes to open a school, for Reading, Writing, Arithmetick, &c._" In 1789 there were twenty-two distillers of rum in Boston: there are nine only, named in the Directory of 1848-9. The increase of doctors and all the appliances of sickness and death have not probably arisen from the falling off, among distillers. In 1789, there were about twenty innholders: there are now eighty-eight public houses, hotels, or taverns--ninety-two restaurants--thirty-five confectionery establishments--thirty-nine stores, under the caption of "liquors and wines"--sixty-nine places, for the sale of oysters, which are not always the _spiritless_ things they appear to be--one hundred and forty-three wholesale dealers, in West India goods and groceries--three hundred and seventy-three retailers of such articles: I speak not of those, who fall below the dignity of history; whose operations are entirely subterraneous; and whose entire stock in trade might be carried, in a wheelbarrow. We have also one hundred and fifty-two provision dealers. We live well in this city. It would be very pleasant, to walk over it, with old Captain Keayne, who died here, March 23, 1656, and who left a sum of money to the town, to erect a granary or storehouse, for the poor, in case of famine! No. CXIII. The Quack is commonly accounted a spurious leech--a false doctor--clinging, like a vicious barnacle, to the very bottom of the medical profession. But impostors exist, in every craft, calling, and profession, under the names of quacks, empirics, charmers, magicians, professors, sciolists, plagiaries, enchanters, charlatans, pretenders, judicial astrologers, quacksalvers, muffs, mountebanks, medicasters, barrators, cheats, puffs, champertors, cuckoos, diviners, jugglers, and verifiers of suggestions. Butler, in his Hudibras, says, of medical quacks, they Seek out for plants, with signatures, To quack of universal cures. In the Spectator, Addison has this observation--"At the first appearance, that a French quack made in Paris, a boy walked before him, publishing, with a shrill voice, '_my father cures all sorts of distempers_;' to which the doctor added, in a grave manner, '_what the boy says is true_.'"