It took them two days to get to Margate, and another day to reach Gravesend. On their way they passed a vessel cast on shore, which ‘cut a dismal figure, such as they make, to an enlightened eye, who make shipwreck of faith, whom Christians see, as they pursue their course, run aground, and dash to pieces.’ By the time they came to Gravesend some of the passengers had had enough of the Hoy--so they hired a boat and four men to row them to London, but the wind getting up, the river became rough, and the boat being over-loaded, the boatmen begged them to get on board a fishing-smack, which they did, and arrived at Billingsgate safely. We can hardly imagine, in these days of steam, that a journey from Ramsgate to London would last from Monday morning to Wednesday night, but people did not hurry themselves too much in those days. QUACKS OF THE CENTURY. In all ages there have been pretenders to medical science, and it has been reserved to the present century to elevate the healing art into a real science, based on proper physiological facts, aided by the searching analyses of modern chemistry. The old alchemists had died out, yet they had some pretensions to learning, but the pharmacopœia at the commencement of the eighteenth century was in a deplorable condition. Surgery, for rough purposes, had existed since the earliest ages, because accidents would happen, then as now; and, moreover, there were wars, which necessitated the amputation of limbs, etc., but medicine, except in the knowledge of the virtue of herbs and simples, was in more than a primitive state. Anyone who chose, could dub himself Doctor, and, naturally, the privilege was largely taken advantage of. The name of quack, or quacksalver, does not seem to have been much used before the seventeenth century, and its derivation has not been distinctly settled. In the ‘Antiquities of Egypt,’ etc., by William Osburn, junior, London, 1847, p. 94, he says: ‘The idea of a physician is frequently represented by a species of duck, the name of which is CHIN: the Egyptian word for physician was also CHINI.’ But neither Pierret, in his ‘Vocabulaire Hieroglyphique,’ nor Bunsen, in ‘Egypt’s Place in Universal History,’ endorse this statement. Still the Egyptian equivalent for cackling, or the noise of a goose, was _Ka ka_, and in Coptic _Ouok_, pronounced very much like quack. The Germans also use the word _Quacksalber_, and the Dutch _Kwaksalver_, a term which Bilderdijk, in his ‘Geslachtlijst der Naamwoorden,’ (derivation or gender of men’s names) says, ought more properly to be _Kwabsalver_, from _Kwab_, a wen, and _Salver_, to anoint. Be this as it may, the English word quack certainly means an illegitimate medical practitioner, a pretender to medical science, whose pretensions are not warranted by his knowledge.