or make an Experiment of the Prescription.  I have heard of a Porter, who serves as a Knight of the Post under one of these Operators, and tho’ he was never sick in his Life, has been cured of all the Diseases in the Dispensary.  These are the Men whose Sagacity has invented Elixirs of all sorts, Pills and Lozenges, and take it as an Affront if you come to them before you are given over by every Body else.  Their Medicines are infallible, and never fail of Success, that is of enriching the Doctor, and setting the Patient effectually at Rest.

I lately dropt into a Coffee-house at Westminster, where I found the Room hung round with Ornaments of this Nature.  There were Elixirs, Tinctures, the Anodine Fotus, English Pills, Electuaries, and, in short, more Remedies than I believe there are Diseases.  At the Sight of so many Inventions, I could not but imagine my self in a kind of Arsenal or Magazine, where store of Arms were reposited against any sudden Invasion.  Should you be attack’d by the Enemy Side-ways, here was an infallible Piece of defensive Armour to cure the Pleurisie:  Should a Distemper beat up your Head Quarters, here you might purchase an impenetrable Helmet, or, in the Language of the Artist, a Cephalic Tincture:  If your main Body be assaulted, here are various Kinds of Armour in Case of various Onsets.  I began to congratulate the present Age upon the Happiness Men might reasonably hope for in Life, when Death was thus in a manner Defeated; and when Pain it self would be of so short a Duration, that it would but just serve to enhance the Value of Pleasure:  While I was in these Thoughts, I unluckily called to mind a Story of an Ingenious Gentleman of the last Age, who lying violently afflicted with the Gout, a Person came and offered his Service to Cure him by a Method, which he assured him was Infallible; the Servant who received the Message carried it up to his Master, who enquiring whether the Person came on Foot or in a Chariot; and being informed that he was on Foot:  Go, says he, send the Knave about his Business:  Was his Method as infallible as he pretends, he would long before now have been in his Coach and Six. In like manner I concluded, that had all these Advertisers arrived to that Skill they pretend to, they would have had no Need for so many Years successively to publish to the World the Place of their Abode, and the Virtues of their Medicines.  One of these Gentlemen indeed pretends to an effectual Cure for Leanness:  What Effects it may have had upon those who have try’d it I cannot tell; but I am credibly informed, that the Call for it has been so great, that it has effectually cured the Doctor himself of that Distemper.  Could each of them produce so good an Instance of the Success of his Medicines, they might soon persuade the World into an Opinion of them.