The ridiculous falsehoods of Quacks have long been detested by the sensible part of the Community; but every thing that has been said and written against them avails nothing: thousands of silly people are yet duped, nay, are bigoted in their belief of the efficacy of nostrums. Be it my task to shew the reader a few of the contrivances and schemes of a Century, and to bring before him genuine effusions of impudence which have daily insulted and deceived the inhabitants of London.

"April 12, 1700.

A satisfactory experiment for the curious.

"If you please to pour one part of Sal volatile oleosum, or any other oily salts into a narrow-bottomed wine-glass, and near the like quantity of Stringer's Elixir, febrifugium martis, there will be a pleasant conflict: the elixir will immediately make a preparation of and precipitate those oily volatile salts into a fixed armoniac salt in the bottom, and receive the spirituous aromatic oily parts into itself, and yet retain its own virtues, colour, and taste. There is no other true and genuine elixir but Mr. Stringer's that is exposed to sale; for those called Elixir proprietatu and Elixir salutis, &c. are mere tinctures drawn by brandy or nasty spirits; but this is a perfect elixir or quintessence, whose perfect principles of spirits, oil, and salt, are so inseparably united, that it can neither decay, putrefy, nor die, no more than the glass that contains it; and is so far from being a harsh corrosive, that it feels like oil, yet dries like a spirit, cleanses the skin like soap, and not only allays all putrefactive ferments in a moment, but immediately cures the most malignant fevers, takes away all sorts of corns and hardness in the skin, and makes the roughest hands smooth and white, only by anointing with it morning and night for a month together: which medicine with his other called Salt of Lemons, in despite of all opposers, will approve themselves nearest of affinity to an universal medicine."

In this admirable medicine the Londoner of 1700 had an internal and an external application, and materials to cleanse and soften the hands, which would at the same time enable him to walk the streets in comfort and ease, in defiance of corns and horny excrescences. Happy Londoners! possessing such men as Dr. Pechey and Mr. Stringer, aided by Dr. Case, whose unguentum panchrestum, prepared by the Spagyrick art, might justly be called the Golden Mine. This wonderful preparation cured by its sympathetical powers; in short, the Doctor found "it more infallible than the Zenexton of Paracelsus." This great Doctor was the means of informing us that Quacks were then in the habit of employing persons to thrust bills into the hands of passengers in the streets. For example: "Your old friend, Dr. Case, desires you not to forget him, although he has left the common way of bills."

A brother Quack this year issued the following notice: "John Poley, at Broken-wharf, over-against the Water-mill in Thames-street, next door to the Bell, will undertake to cure any smokey chimneys. No cure, no money."

I very much doubt whether even the lowest class of ignorants would be deceived at present by the ensuing impudent falsehood. "Whereas it has been industriously reported, that Doctor Herwig, who cures madness and most distempers by sympathy, has left England, and returned to Germany: This is to give notice, that he lives at the same place, viz. at Mr. Gagelman's, in Suffolk-street, Charing-cross, about the middle of the street, over-against the green balcony."

The reader will undoubtedly admire the modesty of Mr. Bartlett, who, in 1704, advertised, "Bartlett's inventions of Steel Trusses, Instruments, Medicines, and methods to cure Ruptures and other faults of those parts, and to make the weak strong, and crooked strait, most of which I could help with the twentieth part of the trouble and charge occasioned only by delay. I reduce desperate ruptures in a few minutes, though likely to be mortal in a few hours, and have made the only true discovery of cause and cure. Infants and others born so, and to men of fifty or sixty years, in a few weeks cured. I sell strait stockings, collars, and swings, and such like things. Advice and medicines to the poor gratis."

Of all the inventions for the amendment and recovery of the human frame from disease and death, none equals the Dutch stiptick, seriously mentioned in the Supplement, printed by John Morphew, April 27, 1709; but which I suspect proceeded from the waggish pen of Mr. Bickerstaff, or some other wit, who sent their effusions to the publisher of the Tatler. "There is prepared by a person of quality in Holland a stiptick water; for the receipt of which, exclusive of all others, the French King has offered 150,000 pistoles; but the proprietor refused to take the same. It was tried upon a Hen, before his Grace the Duke of Marlborough, on board the Peregrine galley. The feathers being all plucked from her head, a large nail was drove through her brains, gullet, tongue, &c. and fastened her head to a table, where it was left near a minute; after which, drawing out the nail and touching the part immediately with the aforesaid stiptick, she was laid upon the deck, and in half an hour's time recovered, and began to eat bread. Several as extraordinary experiments have been made upon dogs, cats, calves, lambs, and other animals, by cutting their guts in several places, the nut of the thigh, and other parts; and it is affirmed, that this stiptick cures any part of the body, except the heart or bladder."

John Marten, with his "Attila of the Gout," and specifick, seemed determined in 1712, to expel that disorder from every human body in the Kingdom. Those who in 1807 read his advertisement, and are not thenceforward converts, must be stubborn unbelievers indeed. "I should be wanting (saith Mr. Marten) as well to the publick as myself, did I not reveal the stupendious effects of my specifick in the gout, which daily experience more and more confirms. And whatever mean opinion any who are strangers to its excellency may entertain of it, either through unbelief, or being prejudiced by those whose interest it is to explode it; let them remember, I tell them (as will many reputable people I will refer them to who have tried it), that if they ever expect certain and speedy relief, without the least detriment to their healths, they must have it. I say they must, because the surprising benefit all receive by it indicates that nothing else can more intimately dilute, and friendly and instantly obtrude and subdue by its soft balmy alterative nature, the acrimony of the humours that distend and torture the joints, and gently lead them away by urine, the only sensible operation it has. And as it is a medicine that will make its own way, it cannot but come (by degrees) to be as universally used and approved of in that distemper, as the Jesuits' bark is for agues, if not more; for none that shall drink it in time will ever be confined a day with the gout, nor others continue in pain an hour after drinking it, though they have lain for weeks together upon the wreck. Any may be further satisfied, and have all objections answered, by word of mouth, or by consulting the book I lately published, intituled, "The Attila of the Gout," being a peculiar account of that distemper, in which the vanity of all that has hitherto been writ and practised to remove it, and an infallible method to cure it, are demonstrated; with ample testimonies of patients cured by John Marten, Surgeon, in Hatton-garden."

I have before observed, that every profession has its Quacks, or persons who deviate from established rules. Such was the Quack writer who inserted the ensuing advertisement in the Evening Post of January 22, 1717. "Whereas a certain pretender to Penmanship has, in an illeterate manner, fell upon my late performance, let him know I look down upon him, yet thus give him his answer: if I did keep monsters for my diversion, that does not affect me in my art; and it is well known that I have not now a deformed creature in my house, which is more than he can say while he is within doors. I pass by the unworthy reflections on my N and O, which I could return upon his R and T; but his own ink will blacken him enough, while it appears in his own irregular scrawls.

The above elegant production has a parallel in the following modest notice of August 1717. "This is to give notice, that Dr. Benjamin Thornhill, sworn servant to his Majesty King George, seventh son of the seventh son, who has kept a stage in the Rounds of West-Smithfield for several months past, will continue to be advised with every day in the week, from eight in the morning till eight at night, at his lodgings at the Swan Tavern, in West-Smithfield, till Michaelmas, for the good of all people that lie languishing under distempers, he knowing that Talenta in agro non est abscondita, that a talent ought not to be hid in the Earth; therefore he exposes himself in public for the good of the poor. The many cures he had performed has given the world great satisfaction, having cured 1500 people of the King's evil, and several hundreds that have been blind, lame, deaf, and diseased. God Almighty having been pleased to bestow upon him so great a talent, he thinks himself bound in duty to be helpful to all sorts of persons that are afflicted with any distemper. He will tell you in a minute what distemper you are troubled with, and whether you are curable or not; if not curable, he will not take any one in hand, if he might have 500l. for a reward.

"N. B. The Doctor has an infallible cure for the Gout, which in a few hours gives ease, and in a short time makes a perfect cure; likewise a never-failing remedy for the wind colic in the stomach and bowels."

The Original Weekly Journal of December 28, 1723, contains a set of queries, which seem better suited to the ideas of a person despising Quacks than to have been written by one. "An appeal to the judicious part of mankind, if it is not the grossest imposition imaginable to cram the public prints in so fulsome a manner with infallible specificks, arcana's, Italian boluses, and innumerable Quack-medicines put to sale at Toy-shops and other places, only to hide the shame, and screen from the resentment of injured people, the preparers of such notorious cheats. Are the best physicians or most eminent surgeons ashamed of their prescriptions? Can men of sense be gulled out of their money by the severe affliction of another's pocket (though, in his own words, of their body), because his pretended charity to their deplorable circumstances has induced him to publish what he does not own? Are not the degrees of distempers and the constitutions of men various? Was ever any one thing infallible? Can all people eat the most innocent food with equal advantage? Have we not ingenious Physicians and Surgeons, who act in public, not only to their own honour, but that of their country, and are, by their transcendant skill, become inimitable in all the world? Are not some disappointed in the success of a prescription from the most judicious hand? and will they depend upon what has no known author, and who refers them to the advice of some able Surgeon after cheating them himself? Shall any man's misery prevail upon his credulity to make him more miserable? or will any Surgeon expose his patient? For your own sake, apply to some man of ingenuity and probity, who appears to justify his practice by his success; one of which invites you to his house, at the Golden-heart and Square-lamp, in Crane-court, near Fetter-lane. Ask for the Surgeon, who is to be advised with every morning till 11 o'clock, and from two till nine at night, in any distemper."

After the above interrogatories, it would be absurd to attempt the application of any argument against Quackery. The queries of this extraordinary Quack are absolutely unanswerable; but it will be necessary to add, for the information of posterity, that the daily papers are still filled with false advertisements and false testimonies of cures performed; and that the angles of the streets, walls, and fences of London, are covered with bills issued by Quacks, while, perhaps, upwards of an hundred persons obtain a livelihood by handing them to passengers in every street.

This method of proceeding may be pronounced one of the customs which distinguish London; and, as I purpose tracing those, the reader will forgive my entering upon the subject without any other preliminary observation, than that I am afraid he will find some of the number trench very closely upon the rights of the articles under the head of Depravity.