As soon as I had seen Mowbray mounted, I went to attend upon poor Belton; whom I found in dreadful agonies, in which he awoke, after he generally does.

The doctor came in presently after, and I was concerned at the scene that passed between them.

It opened with the dying man’s asking him, with melancholy earnestness, if nothing—­if nothing at all could be done for him?

The doctor shook his head, and told him, he doubted not.

I cannot die, said the poor man—­I cannot think of dying.  I am very desirous of living a little longer, if I could but be free from these horrible pains in my stomach and head.  Can you give me nothing to make me pass one week—­but one week, in tolerable ease, that I may die like a man, if I must die!

But, Doctor, I am yet a young man; in the prime of my years—­youth is a good subject for a physician to work upon—­Can you do nothing—­nothing at all for me, Doctor?

Alas!  Sir, replied his physician, you have been long in a bad way.  I fear, I fear, nothing in physic can help you!

He was then out of all patience:  What, then, is your art, Sir?—­I have been a passive machine for a whole twelvemonth, to be wrought upon at the pleasure of you people of the faculty.—­I verily believe, had I not taken such doses of nasty stuff, I had been now a well man—­But who the plague would regard physicians, whose art is to cheat us with hopes while they help to destroy us?—­And who, not one of you, know any thing but by guess?

Sir, continued he, fiercely, (and with more strength of voice and coherence, than he had shown for several hours before,) if you give me over, I give you over.—­The only honest and certain part of the art of healing is surgery.  A good surgeon is worth a thousand of you.  I have been in surgeons’ hands often, and have always found reason to depend upon their skill; but your art, Sir, what is it?—­but to daub, daub, daub; load, load, load; plaster, plaster, plaster; till ye utterly destroy the appetite first, and the constitution afterwards, which you are called in to help.  I had a companion once, my dear Belford, thou knewest honest Blomer, as pretty a physician he would have made as any in England, had he kept himself from excess in wine and women; and he always used to say, there was nothing at all but the pick-pocket parade in the physician’s art; and that the best guesser was the best physician.  And I used to believe him too—­and yet, fond of life, and fearful of death, what do we do, when we are taken ill, but call ye in?  And what do ye do, when called in, but nurse our distempers, till from pigmies you make giants of them? and then ye come creeping with solemn faces, when ye are ashamed to prescribe, or when the stomach won’t bear its natural food, by reason of your poisonous potions,—­Alas, I am afraid physic can do no more for him!—­Nor need it, when it has brought to the brink of the grave the poor wretch who placed all his reliance in your cursed slops, and the flattering hopes you gave him.