_Quacks._--In the neighbourhood of Sevenoaks, Kent, a little girl was
bitten by a mad dog lately. Instead of sending for the doctor, her father
posted off to an old woman famous for her treatment of hydrophobia. The old
woman sent a quart bottle of some dark liquid, which the patient is to take
twice or thrice daily: and for this the father, though but a poor labourer,
had to pay one pound. The liquid is said by the "country sort" to be
infallible. It is made of herbs plucked by the old woman, and mixed with
milk. Its preparation is of course a grand secret. As yet, the child keeps
well.
Near Whitechapel, London, is another old woman, equally famous; but her
peculiar talent is not for hydrophobia, but for scalds. Whenever any of the
Germans employed in the numerous sugar-refineries in that neighbourhood
scald themselves, they beg, instead of being sent to the hospital, to be
taken to the old woman. For a few sovereigns, she will take them in, nurse,
and cure them; and I was informed by a proprietor of a large sugar-house
there, that often in a week she will heal a scald as thoroughly as the
hospital will in a month, and send the men back hearty and fit for work to
boot. She uses a good deal of linseed-oil, I am told; but her great secret,
they say, is, that she gives the whole of her time and attention to the
patient.