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.
A WITTOL
Is a person of great complaisance, and very civil to all that have
occasion to make use of his wife. He married a wife as a common proxy
for the service of all those that are willing to come in for their
shares; he engrossed her first by wholesale, and since puts her off by
retail; he professes a form of matrimony, but utterly denies the power
thereof.
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