Is an epidemic physician, a doctor-errant, that keeps himself up by
being, like a top, in motion, for if he should settle he would fall to
nothing immediately. He is a pedlar of medicines, a petty chapman of
cures, and tinker empirical to the body of man. He strolls about to
markets and fairs, where he mounts on the top of his shop, that is his
bank, and publishes his medicines as universal as himself; for
everything is for all diseases, as himself is of all places--that is to
say, of none. His business is to show tricks and impudence. As for the
cure of diseases, it concerns those that have them, not him, further
than to get their money. His pudding is his setter that lodges the
rabble for him, and then slips him, who opens with a deep mouth, and has
an ill day if he does not run down some. He baits his patient's body
with his medicines, as a rat-catcher does a room, and either poisons the
disease or him. As soon as he has got all the money and spent all the
credit the rabble could spare him, he then removes to fresh quarters
where he is less known and better trusted. If but one in twenty of his
medicines hit by chance, when nature works the cure, it saves the credit
of all the rest, that either do no good or hurt; for whosoever recovers
in his hands, he does the work under God; but if he die, God does it
under him: his time was come, and there's an end. A velvet jerkin is his
prime qualification, by which he is distinguished from his pudding, as
he is with his cap from him. This is the usher of his school, that draws
the rabble together, and then he draws their teeth. He administers
physic with a farce, and gives his patients a preparative of dancing on
the rope, to stir the humours and prepare them for evacuation. His fool
serves for his foil, and sets him off as well as his bragging and lying.
The first thing he vents is his own praise, and then his medicines
wrapped up in several papers and lies. He mounts his bank as a vaulter
does his wooden horse, and then shows tricks for his patients, as apes
do for the King of Spain. He casts the nativity of urinals, and tries
diseases, like a witch, by water. He bails the place with a jig, draws
the rabble together, and then throws his hook among them. He pretends to
universal medicines; that is, such as, when all men are sick together,
will cure them all, but till then no one in particular.