The doctor describes the dawn of pharmacy in France and Spain, which was first practised by the surgeons who became surgeon-apothecaries. The use of emetics in medical treatment came largely into vogue in 1658. It is said that the life of Louis XIV. was saved by an emetic administered by Dusausoi, in opposition to the opinion of Vallot, the chief physician to the king. CHAPTER VI. BEN JONSON. Ben Jonson gives a description of the itinerant doctor in Queen Elizabeth’s time, who travelled the country, usually accompanied by a jester or zany, as he was called, who carried the box or chest containing his remedies. We see the professor with his copper rings, shining chain, better than gold but not quite so valuable, his yellow jewel, his dirty feather-embroidered suit, grave look, and starched beard.[45] Hush! he begins:— [45] Ben Jonson’s _Fox_, act ii., scene i. “Most noble gentlemen and my worthy patrons!—I have nothing to sell, little or nothing to sell, though I protest, I and my six servants are not able to make of my precious balsam so fast as it is fetched away from my lodging by the worthy men of the town. O health! health! the blessing of the rich, the riches of the poor, who can buy thee at too dear a rate? And since there is no enjoying the world without thee, for when a humid flux or catarrh, by the mutability of air, falls from your head into an arm or shoulder, take you a rose noble or an angel of gold and apply to the place affected; see what good effect it can work. No, no; to this blessed unguent, this rare extraction, that hath only power to dispose all malignant humours that proceed either of hot, cold, moist, or windy causes; to fortify the most indigest and crude stomach—aye, were it one that through extreme weakness vomited blood, applying only a warm napkin to the place after the unction and fricace; for the vertigoe in the head, putting out a drop into your nostrils, likewise behind the ears, a most sovereign and approved remedy; the _mal caduco_, cramps, convulsions, paralysies, epilepsies, tremor cordia, retind nerves, ill vapours of the spleen, and stoppings of the liver, or stops a dysentery, immediately cureth poison of the small guts, and cures melancholia, being taken and applied according to my printed recipe (shows his bill and vial, and the zany sings a song). It will cost you eight crowns, and has cured all the kings in Christendom. Many have attempted to make this oil, wasting thousands of crowns in the ingredients (for there go to it sixty several simples, besides some quantity of human fat for conglutination, which we buy of the anatomists); but when these practitioners come to the last decoction, blow, blow! puff, puff! it flies in fumes, poor wretches.