‘There is another branch of pretenders to this art, who, without either horse or pickle herring,[107] lie snug in a garret, and send down notice to the world of their extraordinary parts and abilities by printed bills and advertisements. These seem to have derived their custom from an eastern nation which Herodotus speaks of, among whom it was a law that whenever any cure was to be performed, both the method of the cure, and an account of the distemper, should be fixed in some public place; but, as customs will corrupt, these, our moderns, provide themselves with persons to attest the cure before they publish or make an experiment of the prescription. I have heard of a porter, who serves as a Knight of the post[108] under one of these operators, and, though he was never sick in his life, has been cured of all the diseases in the Dispensary. These are the men whose sagacity has invented elixirs of all sorts, pills and lozenges, and take it as an affront if you come to them before you have been given over by everybody else. Their medicines are infallible, and never fail of success; that is, of enriching the doctor, and setting the patient effectually at rest. ‘I lately dropt into a coffee-house at Westminster, where I found the room hung round with ornaments of this nature. There were Elixirs, Tinctures, the Anodyne Fotus, English Pills, Electuaries, and, in short, more remedies than I believe there are diseases. At the sight of so many inventions, I could not but imagine myself in a kind of arsenal or magazine, where a store of arms was deposited against any sudden invasion. Should you be attacked by the enemy sideways, here was an infallible piece of defensive armour to cure the pleurisy; should a distemper beat up your head-quarters, here you might purchase an impenetrable helmet, or, in the language of the artist, a cephalic tincture; if your main body be assaulted, here are various kinds of armour in case of various onsets. I began to congratulate the present age upon the happiness man might reasonably hope for in life, when death was thus in a manner defeated, and when pain itself would be of so short a duration, that it would just serve to enhance the value of pleasure.