ot take upon him to say. "No matter," cried Sir Launcelot, "he
may strike out some lucky thought for the benefit of the patient, and I
desire you will call him instantly."

While the apothecary was absent on this service, our adventurer took it
in his head to question the landlord about the character of this
physician, which had been so unfavourably represented, and received the
following information:--

"For my peart, measter, I knows nothing amiss of the doctor--he's a quiet
sort of an inoffensive man; uses my house sometimes, and pays for what he
has, like the rest of my customers. They says he deals very little in
physic stuff, but cures his patients with fasting and water-gruel,
whereby he can't expect the 'pothecary to be his friend. You knows,
master, one must live, and let live, as the saying is. I must say, he,
for the value of three guineas, set up my wife's constitution in such a
manner, that I have saved within these two years, I believe, forty pounds
in 'pothecary's bills. But what of that? Every man must eat, thof at
another's expense; and I should be in a deadly hole myself if all my
customers should take it in their heads to drink nothing but water-gruel,
because it is good for the constitution. 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 b