The Æsculapian Labyrinth Explored; Or, Medical Mystery IllustratedTaplin, William
Science
The Æsculapian Labyrinth Explored; Or, Medical Mystery Illustrated
Taplin, William
Medicine -- Anecdotes; Medicine -- Humor; Pharmacists -- Early works to 1800; Physicians -- Early works to 1800
We suppose you embarking in a sea of spirited opposition, with your
competitors, for professional celebrity, and decorating your place
of residence in the most applicable stile to attract attention. To
effect this, let your exterior apartments be ornamented with the
_busts_ of _ancients_ you _never read_, and _portraits_ of _moderns_
that you _never knew_. These form an excellent combination to
excite the admiration and report of those who have occasion to court
the assistance of your extensive abilities.—To gradually heighten
which surprize, your interior (or _audit room_) must be a perfect
_Golgotha_.—A proficiency in the science of _osteology_, must be
powerfully impressed upon the senses of the trembling visitors, by
a _profusion_ of _skeletons_ in different states; let the awfulness
of the scene be rendered still more striking, by a variety of
subjects suspended in spirits, interspersed with singular _anatomical
and injected preparations_, both wet and dry; giving to the whole
additional force by the introduction of a “_few ill shaped fishes_,”
as the finishing stroke to a well formed plan of _chirurgical
ostentation_. Remember to let the _certificates_ of your professional
qualifications, from your different _lecturing tutors_, be so placed
(in elegant frames) as to meet the eye in a conspicuous direction;
lest that part of your patients, who condescend to visit you in this
gloomy recess, should have reason to conclude you a _consummate dunce_
and most _illiterate booby_, if these learned professors had not done
your friends the favour to “_certify_” to the contrary: and this they
always _chearfully_ do, rather than have it imagined they have eased
you of a part of your property, without doing you any _real service_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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