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all his former modesty and demureness, and flushed his forehead with all the impudence of a thorough-paced quack, I immediately discovered him to be a very eminent and learned mountebank.

This discovery raised my curiosity as much as it abated my surprise, so that being very desirous to hear what new proposal the doctor had to make, or what new arcanum in physic he had found out, I quitted my former station and joined myself to the crowd that encompassed him. After a short preamble, he began to open the design of his embassy, setting forth at large the great affection which he bore in particular to the people of that place; amplifying on his own merits and qualifications, specifying great numbers of cures which he had wrought on incurable distempers, expatiating on the extreme danger of being without his physic, and offering health and immortality to sale for the price of a tester.

You'd have burst your sides had you but heard the foolish allusions, quaint expressions, and inconsistent metaphors, which fell from the mouth of this eloquent declaimer. For my part I should have wondered where he could have raked up nonsense enough to furnish out such a wordy harangue, but that I am told he has studied the Flying Post with a great deal of application, and that most of the silly things in his speech are borrowed from that excellent author. Sometimes he'd creep in the most vulgar phrases imaginable, by and by he'd soar out of sight and traverse the spacious realms of fustian and bombast. He was, indeed, very sparing of his Latin and Greek, as (God knows) having a very slender stock of those commodities; but then, for hard words and terms, which neither he, nor you, nor I, nor anybody else understand, he poured them out in such abundance that you'd have sworn he had been rehearsing some of the occult philosophy of Agrippa or Rosicrusius, or reading a lecture out of Cabala.

After the doctor had given such ample indications of the greatest humanity, skill, and erudition, who

d'ye think would be so incredulous as not to believe him, or so uncourteous as to refuse to purchase one of his packets? Lest any of us, however, should be too tenacious of our money to part with it on these considerations, he had one other motive which did not fail to do the business; this was by persuading us that there were the seeds of some malignant distemper lurking in every one of our bodies, and that there was nothing in nature could save us but some one or other of his medicines. He threatened us with death in case of refusal, and assured us with a prophetic air that without his physic every mother's son of us would be in our graves by that day twelve-month. The poor people were infinitely terrified with the imminent danger they found themselves under, but were as much pleased to find how easy it was to be evaded; so that, without more ado, every man bought his packet, and turned the doctor adrift to pursue further adventures.

The scene being now removed, I was at leisure to reflect on what had passed, and could really have either cried or laughed very heartily at what I had seen. The arrogance of the doctor and the silliness of his patients were each of them ridiculous enough to have set a person of more gravity than myself a-laughing; but then to consider the tragical issue to which these things tended, and the fatal effect so many murthering medicines might have on several of his majesty's good subjects, would have made the merriest buffoon alive serious. I have not often observed a more hale, robust crowd of people than that which encircled this doughty doctor, methinks one might have read health in their very faces, and there was not a countenance among them which did not give the lie to the doctor's suggestions. Could but one see a little into futurity, and observe the condition they will be in a few months hence, what an alteration would one find! How many of those brawny youths are already puking in chimney corners? And how many rosy complexioned girls are by this time reduced to the paleness of a cockney?

I propose in a little time to make a second journey to this place in order to see how the doctor's physic has operated. By searching the parish register and comparing the number of funerals made weekly before the doctor's visit with those which have followed, it I will be easy to form an estimate of the havoc which this itinerant man-slayer made in the space of two hours. I shall then proceed to compute the number of quacks in the three kingdoms, from which it will be no hard matter to determine the number of people carried off per annum by the whole fraternity. Lastly, I shall calculate the loss which the government sustains by the death of every subject; from all of which the immense damages accruing to his majesty will evidently appear, and the public will be fully convinced of the truth of what I have heretofore asserted, viz. that the quacks contribute more towards keeping us poor than all our national debts, and that to suppress the former would be an infallible means of redeeming the latter. The whole scheme shall be drawn up in due form and presented to the parliament in the ensuing session, and that august assembly, I don't doubt, will pay all regard thereto, which the importance of the subject and the weight of my argument shall require.

Methinks the course of justice, which has hitherto obtained among us, is chargeable with great absurdities. Petty villains are hanged or transported, while great ones are suffered to pass impune. A man cannot take a purse upon the highway, or cut a single throat, but he must presently be called to answer for it at the Old Bailey, and perhaps to suffer for it at Tyburn; and yet, here are wretches suffered to commit murthers by wholesale, and to plunder, not only private persons and pockets, but even the king and the Exchequer, without having any questions asked! Pray what were gibbets, gallows, and whipping posts made for?

But to return to Doctor Thornhill. I have had the curiosity to examine several of his medicines in a reverberatory, reducing compounds into their simples by

a chemical analysis, and have constantly found a considerable proportion of some poisonous plant or mineral in every one of them. Arsenic, wolf's-bane, mercury, and hemlock are sine quibus non, and he could no more make up a medicament without some of these than remove a mountain. Accordingly as they are variously mixed and disposed among other drugs, he gives them various names, calling them pills, boluses, electuaries, etc. His pills I would prescribe as a succedaneum to a halter, so that such persons as are weary of this troublesome world and would willingly quit it for a better, but are too squeamish to take up with that queer old-fashioned recipe called hanging, may have their business done as securely and more decently by some of these excellent pills. His bolus, too, is very good in its kind; I have made experiments with it on several animals, and find that it poisons to a miracle. A moderate dose of it has perfectly silenced a bawling dog that used to disturb my morning slumbers, and a like quantity of it has quieted several other snarling curs in my neighbourhood. And then, if you be troubled with rats, there's the doctor's electuary which is an infallible remedy, as I myself have experienced. I have effectually cleared my house of those troublesome animals by disposing little packets of it in the places they frequent, and do recommend it to you and your readers as the most powerful ratsbane in the world. It would be needless to enumerate all the virtues of the doctor's several medicines, but I dare affirm that what the ancients fabulously reported of Pandora's box is strictly true of the doctor's packet, and that it contains in it the seeds and principles of all diseases.-Works.

JONATHAN SWIFT

1667-1745

THE STRULDBRUGS, OR IMMORTALS

THE Luggnaggians are a polite and generous people, and although they are not without some share of that pride which is peculiar to all Eastern countries, yet they show themselves courteous to strangers, especially such who are countenanced by the court. I had many acquaintance among persons of the best fashion, and being always attended by my interpreter, the conversation we had was not disagreeable.

One day in much good company I was asked by a person of quality, whether I had seen any of their Struldbrugs, or Immortals. I said I had not, and desired he would explain to me what he meant by such an appellation applied to a mortal creature. He told me, that sometimes, though very rarely, a child happened to be born in a family with a red circular spot in the forehead, directly over the left eyebrow, which was an infallible mark that it should never die. The spot, as he described it, was about the compass of a silver threepence, but in the course of time grew larger, and changed its colour; for at twelve years old it became green, so continued till five and twenty, then turned to a deep blue; at five and forty it grew coal black, and as large as an English shilling, but never admitted any further alteration. He said these births were so rare, that he did not believe there could be above eleven hundred struldbrugs of both sexes in the whole kingdom, of which he computed about fifty in the metropolis, and among the rest a young girl born about three years ago. That these productions were not peculiar to any family, but a mere effect of chance; and the children of the struldbrugs themselves, were equally mortal with the rest of the people.

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