preventitive pills against the plague;” “Never-failing preservatives against the infection;” “Sovereign cordials against the corruption of air;” “Exact regulations for the conduct of the body in case of infection;” “Antipestilential pills;” “Incomparable drink against the plague, never found out before;” “An universal remedy for the plague;” “The only true plague water;” “The royal antidote against all kinds of infection;” and such a number more that I cannot reckon up, and, if I could, would fill a book of themselves to set them down.

Others set up bills to summon people to their lodgings for direction and advice in the case of infection.  These had specious titles also, such as these:—­

    An eminent High-Dutch physician, newly come over from Holland,
      where he resided during all the time of the great plague,
      last year, in Amsterdam, and cured multitudes of people that
      actually had the plague upon them.

    An Italian gentlewoman just arrived from Naples, having a
      choice secret to prevent infection, which she found out by
      her great experience, and did wonderful cures with it in the
      late plague there, wherein there died 20,000 in one day.

    An ancient gentlewoman having practiced with great success in
      the late plague in this city, anno 1636, gives her advice
      only to the female sex.  To be spoken with, etc.

    An experienced physician, who has long studied the doctrine of
      antidotes against all sorts of poison and infection, has,
      after forty years’ practice, arrived at such skill as may,
      with God’s blessing, direct persons how to prevent being
      touched by any contagious distemper whatsoever.  He directs
      the poor gratis.

I take notice of these by way of specimen.  I could give you two or three dozen of the like, and yet have abundance left behind.  It is sufficient from these to apprise any one of the humor of those times, and how a set of thieves and pickpockets not only robbed and cheated the poor people of their money, but poisoned their bodies with odious and fatal preparations; some with mercury, and some with other things as bad, perfectly remote from the thing pretended to, and rather hurtful than serviceable to the body in case an infection followed.

I cannot omit a subtlety of one of those quack operators with which he gulled the poor people to crowd about him, but did nothing for them without money.  He had, it seems, added to his bills, which he gave out in the streets, this advertisement in capital letters; viz., “He gives advice to the poor for nothing.”