Thank God, I have as good a constitution as e'er a man in England, but for all that, I and my whole family bleed and purge, and take a diet-drink twice a year, by way of serving the 'pothecary, who is a very honest man, and a very good neighbour." Their conversation was interrupted by the return of the apothecary with the doctor, who had very little of the faculty in his appearance.

He was dressed remarkably plain; seemed to be turned of fifty; had a careless air, and a sarcastical turn in his countenance.

Before he entered the sick man's chamber, he asked some questions concerning the disease; and when the apothecary, pointing to his own head, said, "It lies all here," the doctor, turning to Sir Launcelot, replied, "If that be all there's nothing in it." Upon a more particular inquiry about the symptoms, he was told that the blood was seemingly viscous, and salt upon the tongue; the urine remarkably acrosaline; and the faeces atrabilious and foetid.

When the doctor said he would engage to find the same phenomena in every healthy man of the three kingdoms, the apothecary added, that the patient was manifestly comatous, and moreover afflicted with griping pains and borborygmata.

"A f--t for your borborygmata," cried the physician; "what has been done ?" To this question, he replied, that venesection had been three times performed; that a vesicatory had been applied inter scapulas; that the patient had taken occasionally of a cathartic apozem, and between whiles, alexipharmic boluses and neutral draughts.--"Neutral, indeed," said the doctor; "so neutral, that I'll be crucified if ever they declare either for the patient or the disease." So saying, he brushed into Crabshaw's chamber, followed by our adventurer, who was almost suffocated at his first entrance.