The facility wherewith ignorant persons may acquire a reputation for skill in Medicine, is exemplified by the following anecdote. A Staffordshire cobbler had somehow gotten possession of a parcel of medical receipts, and made such diligent use thereof, that he not only was speedily invested with the title of Doctor, but likewise became famous in the neighborhood on account of some alleged remarkable cures. Thereupon he laid aside his awl to assume the dignity of a charlatan. It happened that a young lady of fortune fell ill about that time, and her mother was induced to send for the newly fledged Esculapian. The latter, after examining the patient, remarked that he would go home and consider the case, as he never prescribed rashly. Accordingly in looking over his recipes, he found one which tickled his fancy, although the directions, "to be taken in a proper vehicle," mystified him. Nothing daunted, he consulted a dictionary and found that a vehicle was either a coach, cart or wheel-barrow. Highly elated, he hastened to inform the young lady's mother that her coach must be gotten ready at once, and that her daughter must get into it and take the remedy which he had brought. But the lady would not consent, alleging the risk of exposure to the outside air. "Well," said the rascally quack, "you must then order a wheel-barrow to be sent to your daughter's room, for this medicine must be taken in a proper vehicle, and in my opinion a wheel-barrow will answer the purpose as well as a coach."[226:1] Can any one doubt that the wheel-barrow furnished a powerful therapeutic suggestion in this case? In the early part of the eighteenth century, it appears that charlatans were very numerous in England. Indeed the "corps of medical savages" was almost as motley and manifold in form as in the Middle Ages. The dabblers in medicine included grocers, book-sellers, printers, confectioners, merchants and traders, midwives, medical students, preachers, chemists, distillers, gipsies, shepherds, conjurors, old women, sieve-makers and water-peddlers. Apothecaries were permitted to sell drugs to "alchemists, bath-servants and ignorant quacks, while dabsters, calf-doctors, rag-pickers, magicians, witches, crystallomancers, sooth-sayers and other _mancipia_ [purchased slaves] of the Devil, were allowed to practice Medicine."[227:1] At this same period, we are told, the mass of the English people were extraordinarily credulous. And this fact was true, not only of the densely ignorant class, but also of the more intelligent and better educated middle class, who were ready to believe everything that appeared in print.[227:2] Hence was afforded an ideal field for the exercise of the wily charlatan's activities. And the glowing advertisements of quack remedies appealed strongly to the popular fancy.