Gilbert’s water, my son was taking possession of my estate, my wife so busy about the beds and hangings that she could not intend it. The boy and the wench could understand nothing but about their legacies. My very good friend’s mind was wholly upon his tankard. My kind Dr. I must confess took occasion, now and then, to handle my pulse, and see whether the diamond were of the right black water, or no. If I asked him what I might eat, his answer was, ‘Anything, anything, e’en what you please yourself.’ At every groan I fetched, they were calling for their legacies, which they could not have till I was dead. “But if I were to begin the world again, I think I should make another kind of testament. I would say: ‘A curse upon him that shall have my estate when I am dead, and may the first bit of bread he eats out on’t choke him. The devil in hell take what I cannot carry away, and him too, that straggles for’t, if he can catch him. If I die, let my boy Robin have the strappado, three hours a day, to be duly paid him during life. Let my wife die of the pip, or the mother (not a halfpenny matter which), but let her first live long enough to plague the damned doctor, and indite him for poisoning her poor husband.’ To speak sincerely, I can never forgive that dog-leech. Was it not enough to make me sick when I was well, without making me dead when I was sick? And not to rest there neither, but to persecute me in my grave too. But, to say the truth, this is only neighbours’ fare; for all those fools that trust in them are served with the same sauce. A vomit or a purge is as good a passport into the other world as a man would wish. And then, when our heads are laid, ’tis never to be endured the scandals they cast upon our bodies and memories! ‘Heaven rest his soul,’ cries one, ‘he killed himself with a debauch.’ ‘How is’t possible,’ says another, ‘to cure a man that keeps no diet?’ ‘He was a madman,’ cries a third, ‘a mere sot, and would not be governed by his physician. His body was as rotten as a pear, he had as many diseases as a horse, and it was not in the power of man to save him. And truly ’twas well that his hour was come, for he had better a great deal die well than live on as he did.’ Thieves and murtherers that ye are, you yourselves are that hour ye talk of. The physician is only death in a disguise, and brings his patient’s hour along with him. Cruel people! Is it not enough to take away a man’s life, and like common hangmen to be paid for’t when ye have done, but you must blast the honour too of those you have dispatched, to excuse your ignorance? Let but the living follow my counsel, and write their testaments after this copy, they shall live long and happily, and not go out of the world at last like a rat with a straw in his arse (as a learned author has it) or be cut off in the flower of their days, by these counterfeit doctors of the faculty of the close-stool.”