curiosity.

In the course of these occupations, which frequently affected the
reputation of our two adventurers, this whole body fell under the
displeasure of our hero, who, after divers consultations with his
friend, concerted a stratagem, which was practised upon the faculty
in this manner. Among those who frequented the pump-room, was an old
officer, whose temper, naturally impatient, was, by repeated attacks
of the gout, which had almost deprived him of the use of his limbs,
sublimated into a remarkable degree of virulence and perverseness. He
imputed the inveteracy of his distemper to the malpractice of a surgeon
who had administered to him, while he laboured under the consequences
of an unfortunate amour; and this supposition had inspired him with an
insurmountable antipathy to all the professors of the medical art, which
was more and more confirmed by the information of a friend at London,
who had told him, that it was the common practice among the physicians
at Bath to dissuade their patients from drinking the water, that the
cure, and in consequence their attendance, might be longer protracted.

Thus prepossessed, he had come to Bath, and, conformable to a few
general instructions he had received, used the waters without any
farther direction, taking all occasions of manifesting his hatred and
contempt of the sons of Esculapius, both by speech and gesticulations,
and even by pursuing a regimen quite contrary to that which he knew they
prescribed to others who seemed to be exactly in his condition. But he
did not find his account in this method, how successful soever it may
have been in other cases. His complaints, instead of vanishing, were
every day more and more enraged: and at length he was confined to his
bed, where he lay blaspheming from morn to night, and from night to
morn, though still more determined than ever to adhere to his former
maxims.

In the midst of his torture, which was become the common joke of the
town, being circulated through the industry of the physicians, who
triumphed in his disaster, Peregrine, by means of Mr. Pipes, employed a
country fellow, who had come to market, to run with great haste, early
one morning, to the lodgings of all the doctors in town, and desire them
to attend the colonel with all imaginable despatch. In consequence of
this summons, the whole faculty put themselves in motion; and three
of the foremost arriving at the same instant of time, far from
complimenting