THE CHARACTER OF A Quack-Doctor, OR THE ABUSIVE PRACTICES OF IMPUDENT ILLITERATE Pretenders to Physic EXPOSED.  
— Es Medicus, simul Chirurgus,  
Cur?— mittis stygium Viros ad Orcum  
Et Manu simul, & simul Veneno.  
Licenced and Entered According to Order.  
London, Printed for Thomas Jones, in the Year 1676.   

The CHARACTER of a QUACK-DOCTOR. OR The Abusive Practices of Impudent Illiterate Pretenders to Physic, Exposed, etc.  
A Quack-Doctor is one of the Epidemical Diseases of this Age, a Younger Brother to the Pox, and the Scurvy, but more destructive than either; and like them too, is begot in an Illegitimate Copulation, betwixt ignorance and impudence, an Heterogeneous jumble of the Dregs of Galen and Caput mortuum of Paracelsus; you may call him an Enthusiast in Physic, or a Gifted Brother in the Knack of Healing; a Doctor but no Master of Arts, save those of Cozenage and Lying, a Pettifogger in Medicine, that Goes to Law with Diseases, and Plays Booty with Death; whoever Trust their Lives in his Hands, had need of a large dose of Hellebore, and did not Madness Excuse, must forfeit their Goods and Chattels, as Felo's de se, Accessary to their own Destruction.  
He Pretends to Cure all Diseases that ever Sin Entailed upon the race of Adam, but in truth a vagrant Mountebank, or a Seaventh Son, or an Irish Stroaker out does him Fifty in the Hundred; for his Skill is not so much as a Tooth drawers, and a Corn-Cutter is an Aesculapius to him; the Proverb that asserts every man, To be either a Fool, or a Physician, applied to him, makes a Distinction without a Difference, for this Unalphabetical Cheat, claims both Titles, yet we must confess to his Praise, that his very Presence is Medicinal, for his Looks are enough to give one a Stool or a Vomit, and his everlasting Impertinent Tattle will either Purge your Gall with Anger, or your Spleen with Laughter.  
To trace his Pedigree, is to rake a Dunghill, and write the Genealogy of Mushrooms, for his Birth is (commonly) as wretched as his Breeding, both being below Mechanic, not to be found, but amongst the Feeces of the Bedraggled Rabble; yet he might have Lived well at his Primitive Handicraft, but Extravagance put him upon shifts, & Idleness made him Abandon his Anvil or his Loom, his Awl or his Thimble, & pitch upon this safe and Thriveing course of Pocket-Picking, no Jiltor, Legerdemain, being now a days so Effectual as a Catholic Pill or Universal Portion.  
His prime care, and greatest trouble, is to get the Names of Diseases Without Book, & a Beadrole of Rattling Terms of Art, which he desires only to Remember, not Understand, so that he has more Hard words than a Juggler, and uses them to the same Purpose, to amuse and beguile the Ignorant or unwary, first of their Wit, and next of their Mony.  
To render himself remarkable, he first prevails with some Associate Porters and Tripe-Women to call him Doctor, for his Ingenuity in Healing Kibed Heels, and Curing Cut Fingers with a Shoemaker's Ind and Cobwebs; and so affected he is with the Title, that afterwards he will never answer to any other name, but Mr. Doctor; two Galley Pots, and a Penny worth of Sena-Stalks set him up, and he is not so soon a Student as a Professor; Impudence is his Licence to practice, and at the seaventh Funeral he has caused, he takes his Degree; when he comes to Let Blood you would think him about to stick a Calf, and he Thumbs your Pulse like a Carman playing on the Lute; his Library consists in Penny Volumes, every Man and Woman their own Doctor is his Dispensatory, and as soon as he has read six Leaves in Culpeper, he sends Death a Challenge to play a Prize with him at any Weapon; when People tell him their Grief and their Ails, he knows what the Disease is no more than Poor Robin, yet that he may say something, tells them 'tis a Scurbattical Humour, afflicting the Diaphragma, and comes of Heats and Colds, and then pulling out a Box of Quicksilver Pills, (for his Pocket is all his Pharmacopaeia) he bids 'em take them, and provide a Large Chamber Pot, and not doubt but they shall shortly find their Names in his Book of Mighty Cures.  
His ambition is to be counted a Philosopher by fire, but is beholding to his Wife and kind Friends to complete him a Vulcan; his Brainpan is stuffed with Antimony and Vitriol, but his fairest pretence to Chemistry is because of an excellent trick he has got, to turn Powder of the Rows of Red-herrings, or a Vial of fair water, into good hard Silver, and by his Art Extracts Money out of Piss as fast as Vespasian; he rails at Galen and Hypocrates (as some Bigots do against the Pope) without knowing whether they were Men or Women; but admires Van Helmont blindfold, and fancies him & Paracelsus to be two jolly Dutch Burgomasters, that by the Hermetick art, first found out the making of Tophet Potabile, in the wounderful Invention of Snap-Dragons and burnt Brandy.  
At first he deals as a private Mountebank, and makes every blind Alehouse he comes in his Stage, where he tells a Thousand Lies of his miraculous Cures, and has his Landlady at his Elbow to Vouch them: he bribe's all the Nurses he can meet with, and keeps a dozen Midwives in Pension to proclaim his skill at Gossip, he indears the Chamber maid by a private Dose, to bring him In with her Mistress; the new Married Citizens Wife, that out-longs Rachel for a Bantling, comes to him for the reputed ability of his Back, not his Brains, and the Suburb Gammer's admire him for copeing a Pot so sociably; sometimes knowing his Medicines not worth buying, he takes up a humour of giving them away, and pretends to Cure all the Poor in the three Nations for nothing.  
— Sed ulla putatis  
Dona Carere Dolis danaum? sic notus Ulysses?  
Notwithstanding this New-fashioned Wheedle, his Charity both begins and ends at home, for when People come to him, he scrutinizes their Abilities more Rigorously than the Chimny-Man, and Extorts six pence out of some that have not been worth a groat these seven years, and sometimes suborns indigent people to bare false witness against themselves, and slander him throughout the Town, with reports of strange Cures he was never guilty of.  
But these are only smaller Angling Baits, his Draw-Net is a Printed Bill, which Catches the Gudgeons in shoals, for hatching of this, he engages some Friend that's Book-learned to correct the false English, and sprucify the sense, and interlard it with Proverbial Latin and Cramp-words, as a Gammon of Bacon is stuffed with Green Herbs and Cloaves to make it go down more savourly; then to a confiding Printer he goes, who depositing paper and pains, is refered for satisfaction to a snack in the profits of the exposed Quackery, and then out comes a Proclamation of wonders, tricked up in some strange form, with abundance of Inviting Capitals and Enticing Rubrics, the Tenor commonly to this effect.  
EXIMIO PRAEDICO; 
 OR 
 A Thousand Infallible Cures  
At the Golden Ball in Fop-Ally next door to the flying Hedgehog in New-Alsasia, Lives the Paraselsus of this age, by name Signior Doloso Effrontero, Native of Arabia Deserta, natural Son of the wonder-working Chimest Doctor lately deceased at the Devil's Arse a Peak in Silesia, and famous throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and America, from the oriental exaltation of Titan, to his occidental Declination.  
Who in pity to his own dear self and Languishing mortals, has by the earnest prayers and solicitations of divers Princes, Lords, and other honourable Personages, been prevailed with to oblige the World with this notice, that all persons Young or Old, or Deaf or Lame, or Blind or Dumb, may know whither to repair for present Cure, in all Cephalalgia's, Paralytical Paroxysms, Odontalgia's, Apoplexia's, Peripneunonia's, Empyema's, Palpitations of the Pericardium, Syncope's, Nanseitie's arising either from a Plethory or a Cacochymy, Disenteria's, Iliacal passions, the Scurvies, Exanthemata; the Hog-Pox, the Hen-Pox, the Smallpox, the Whore's Pox, or the Devils-Pox, the Ascites, Tympanites, or Anasarca, Ict●●rical effusions, Rhumatismes, Phlegmons, Erysepalus' Herpes, Impetigo's, Tentigo's, Scabs, Scaldheads, Warts, Corns, and all other Diseases, Griefs, Wounds, Fractures, Dislocations, Confusions, Dolours, Aches, Defects, Pains, Distempers and Discrasies' of Nature, whether external or Internal, acute or Chronic, Curable or Incurable.  
His Medicines are the Quintessence of Pharmapeutical Energy, and the Cures he has done, are above the Art of the whole World.  
Imprimis, he has a wonderful, Universal unheard of, never-failing Hypnotical, Cordiacal, Cephalical, Hepatical, Anodynous, Odoriferous, Carminative, Renovative, Styptical, and Coroborating Balsam of Balsams, (made of Dead men's fat, Rosin and Goose grease,) that infallibly restores lost Maidenheads, raises demolished Noses, and by its abstersive Cosmetick quality, preserves super-animated Bawds from Wrinkles; he has the true Catharmapophora of Hermes Tresmegistus, an Incomparable spagyrical tincture of the Moon's Horns, the most sovereign Alexipharmacum in the world against the contagion of Cuckoldry; he has the Pantimagogon of the Triple Kingdom that works seven several ways, and is seven years a preparing, being at last exactly completed, secundum Artem, by Fermentation, Putrefaction, Distillation; Rectification, Cohobation, Circulation, Calimation, sublimation, solution, Precipitation, Coagulation, Filtration, and Quidlibetification, both in Balneo Mariae, the Crusible, and the Fixatory, the Athanor, the Cucurbita, and the Reverberatory, this is Nature's Palladium, Health's Magazine, A dram of it is worth a Bushel of March Dust, if any person happen to have his Brains beat out, or his Head Chopped off, two drops seasonably applied shall recall the Fleeting Spirits, reinthrone the deposed Archaeus, cement the discontinuity of the parts, and in six minutes restore the Lifeless Trunk to its pristin vigour, in all its functions, vital, natural and Animal; he has an excellent Antipudengragrian specific, (the choicest jewel amongst Venus' Regalia, which perfectly cures the French Pox with all its noble train of Bubo's, Gonorrhaea's and shankers, with as much pleasure as the same can be contracted, so that it would tempt any man of sense to get that modish Disease (if it may be procured for Love or Money, once a Fortnight, to enjoy the repeated delight of so divertising a Remedy.  
He hath it under the hands and seals of the greatest Caliphs' and Moguls in Christendom, to verificate the reality of his operations, I cared Prester John's Godmother of a Stupendious Dolour about the Os Sacrum, so that the good Lady feared the perdition of her Huckle bone; I did it to the great admiration of that Court, by Fomenting her Posteriors with the Mummy of nature, otherwise called Pilgrim Salve, and the spirit of Mugwort Terragraphocated through a Limbeck of Crystalline transfluences. I Cured the Duchess of Promolpho of the cramp in her tongue, and gave immediate ease to her Nephew the Count de Rodomontado correptus, with an Iliaca Passio by eating buttered Parsneps.  
An Alderman of Grand Cair, that ●●d lain seven year sick of the Plague, I cured him in two and Forty Minutes; from whence I was sent for by Sulton Gilgal Despot of Bosnia, who being violently afflicted with a Spasmus, came 600 Leagues to meet me in a Go-Cart, I gave him so speedy an acquittance from his Dolour, that next Night he Danced a Sarabrand with Flipflaps and Sommersets, and for my reward presented me with a Persian Horse, a Turkish Scymitor, and 300. Hungarian Ducats. I restored Virility and the comfort of Generation to 150 Eunuches in the Grand Signors Seraglio, and by a pair of Prolific Pills lately caused a Vintner's Widow, that had all her life time been Barren, to bring forth a Lusty Boy without the help of a Husband, when she was entered into the twelfth Lustre of her Age; and with a like Emperical Remedy in the Aulalbian Court, Cured Duke Philanax of a Dropsy, whereof he Died.  
In a word, the Cures I have done are no less Innumerable than Incredible, for I willingly undertake none but desperate mortal diseases, and Love to signalise my Practice by performing Impossibilities, and therefore, if any have occasion to make use of me, & render themselves immortal, let them hasten to our Habitation.  
Venienti occurrit Morbo  
Down with your Dust.  
For I am just now sent for by an extraordinary Courier to the mighty Empress of Bomfeze upon important occasions nearly concerning her Royal Person.  
Quaerenda pecunta primum  
Be not Sick too Late,  
Verbum sapienti  
No Money, no Cure.  
Such impudent ostentious Decoy-papers he daily spreads about the Streets, as if he had undertaken to serve the whole City with Bumfodder, and plasters with his quakeries every Pissing-post, and thereby Lime-twigs the Rabble to become his Patients, so we may properly call them; for before he has done with 'em, they are sure to suffer sufficiently, they pretend to use his stuff for Cheapness, but in truth they pay dear enough, for 'tis odds if it do not cost them their Lives, he likewise Hucksters his Venom in every Market Town, and Village, and if the Farmers would buy it only to treat Rats with, it might do them a Courtesy.  
His fullest practice is amongst fond Women that have more Money than Wit, he first persuades them that they are not well, and then gives 'em Physic shall infallibly make 'em sick; he has nature perpetually in his mouth, but knows no more of her, than the Queen of Morocco; and the greatest design he has on Chemistry, is to fit him for the Gallows for Counterfeiting Coyn.  
He is Madam A●ropos's Gentlema●●●…sher, and never appears, but attended with sighs and dying Groans, after a thousand promises of Health, he most perfidiously leaves a man Gasping, and gives this reason, that Death and he have a quarrel and dare not meet, when persons are Killed by his improper Applications, he Chides their Friends for not sending for him sooner; Rails at the Nurses for not observing directions, or alleges the Sick would not be ruled; At worst poor nature bears the blame, and his time was come, serves for an excuse, and the Grave covers his ignorance, but if any happen to recover, though but of a Cold or an Ague, he magnifies the business as if he had raised a second Lazarus, yet in truth the greatest Cure he can boast of, is of his own purse, which from a Maugre Consumption, he has raised to a condition Plump and Thriving; for there are so many Fools in the World, that a Knave can hardly want employment, and they are so incorrigibly silly and stupid, as to think themselves obliged to Gratify him for not Murdering them; and trumpet him up amongst the rest of the undiscerning Crowd, for the greatest Skill, the rarest man in the World; and by these Arts he grows Famous and Rich, and buys him the worshipful Jacket, and takes state upon him, and defies Authority that should suppress his insolency, and at last purchases a Title, and arrives at his Coach, where we leave him an instance of Fortunate Folly and Prosperous Wickedness, driving on (without Repentance) to perfect his pseudo-Chimistry in the Devil's Laboratory.  
FINIS.   

POSTSCRIPT.  
THe Author is far from any intention to Bespatter the noble Art of Healing, or any of its Learned or Honest Ingenious Professors, or to undervalue the most Pleasant and useful Study of Chemistry, or gratify Monopolies in learning, or stinted Methods of formal Ignorance; 'tis the illiterate frontless and dangerous Pretender he would expose to deserved contempt; the sordid passions of envy at any man's Gains, or malice to particular Persons having no Influence on his Pen, he wishes (as the Unicorn is never seen but in Painting) such a Quack might be no where found but in this Idea, and then where nobody is concerned, no body can with reason complain, but if any Conscious Dons shall acknowledge the Picture to be theirs, and think themselves intended, he frankly tells them, they are the Persons meant indeed.  
Innocuos permit Sales, Curio Ludere nobis  
Non Liceat, Licuit, si Jugulare tibi?