Is a mountebank of a larger bill than a tailor: if he can but come by
names enough of diseases to stuff it with, 'tis all the skill he studies
for. He took his first beginning from a cunning woman, and stole this
black art from her, while he made her sea-coal fire. All the diseases
ever sin brought upon man doth he pretend to be a curer of, when the
truth is, his main cunning is corn-cutting. A great plague makes him,
what with railing against such as leave their cures for fear of
infection, and in friendly breaking cake-bread with the fishwives at
funerals. He utters a most abominable deal of carduus water, and the
conduits cry out, All the learned doctors may cast their caps at him. He
parts stakes witn some apothecary in the suburbs, at whose house he
lies; and though he be never so familiar with his wife, the apothecary
dares not (for the richest horn in his shop) displease him. All the
midwives in the town are his intelligencers; but nurses and young
merchants' wives that would fain conceive with child, these are his
idolaters. He is a more unjust bone-setter than a dice-maker. He hath
put out more eyes than the small-pox; more deaf than the cataracts of
Nilus; lamed more than the gout; shrunk more sinews than one that makes
bowstrings, and killed more idly than tobacco. A magistrate that had
any-way so noble a spirit as but to love a good horse well, would not
suffer him to be a farrier. His discourse is vomit, and his ignorance
the strongest purgation in the world. To one that would be speedily
cured, he hath more delays and doubles than a hare or a lawsuit. He
seeks to set us at variance with nature, and rather than he shall want
diseases, he'll beget them. His especial practice (as I said before) is
upon women; labours to make their minds sick, ere their bodies feel it,
and then there's work for the dog-leech. He pretends the cure of madmen;
and sure he gets most by them, for no man in his perfect wit would
meddle with him. Lastly, he is such a juggler with urinals, so
dangerously unskilful, that if ever the city will have recourse to him
for diseases that need purgation, let them employ him in scouring
Moorditch.