in the orisons of those who
attended the chapel of the Venetian Envoy, and in that permitted to the
use of the French Ambassador. Doctor Vigors was now daily in attendance,
with many other learned physicians, who almost fought in the
antechambers on the treatment to be observed towards this sick person.
One was for cataplasms of bran and Venice turpentine, another for
putting live pigeons to her feet, another for a portion of hot wine
strained through gold-leaf and mingled with hellebore and chips of
mandrake. Warwick Lane suggested mint-tea, and Pall Mall was all for
bleeding. This Pall Mall physician was about the most passionate little
man, with the biggest ruffles and the tallest gold-headed cane I ever
saw. His name was Toobey.

"Blood, sir! there's nothing like blood!" he would cry to Doctor Vigors;
and he cried out for "blood, sir," till you might fancy that he was a
butcher or a herald-at-arms, or a housewife making black puddings.

Says Doctor Vigors in a Rage, "You are nothing but a barber-surgeon,
brother, and learnt shaving on a sheep's head, and phlebotomy on a cow
that had the falling fever."

"Mountebank and quacksalver!" answers my passionate gentleman, "you
bought your diploma from one that forges seamen's certificates in Sopar
Lane. Go to, metamorphosed and two-legged ass! Where is your worship's
stage in the Stocks Market, with pills to purge the vapours, and powders
to make my lady in love with her footman, and a lying proclamation on
every post, and a black boy behind you to beat on the cymbals when you
draw out teeth with the kitchen pliers."

"Rogue!" screams Dr. Toobey, "but for the worshipful house we are in, I
would batoon you to a mummy."

"Mummy forsooth!" the other retorts; "Mummy with a murrain! Why, you dug
up your grandmother, and pounded her up with conserve of myrrh, and
called the stuff King Pharaoh, that was sovereign to cure the
strangury."

"Better to do that," quoth Toobey, calming down into mere give and
take--for he had, in truth, done some droll things in mummy
medicaments,--"than to have been a Fleet parson, that was forced to sell
ale and couple beggars for a living, and turned doctor when he had cured
a bad leg for one that had lain too long in the bilboes."

This was too much for Doctor Vigors, who had once been in orders, and
was still a Nonjuror, winked at, for his skill's sake, by Authority. He
was for rushing on the Pall-Mall mummy-doctor and tousling of his wig,