THE LONDON STREET DOCTOR.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VII, Issue 1127, 21 September 1880, Page 2

THE LONDON STREET DOCTOR.

The street doctor is much given to " quacking " — to proclaiming a,ud brag ging of the superiority of his decoctions over all .other known remedies. It is his unflagging zeal in -this respect that gives him his title to be included in the ranks of London toilers. " There is nothing to be done in the street phyaic line o' business without plenty of patter,' as a vendor of a miraculous tooth-ache tincture, at one penny a bottle, confided to me. "In neighborhoods like this (Brict-TaiieVSpitalfields) any amount of mumbo-jumbo, as we call it, ; goe» down. Keep it going, and be getiteef in giving mouth toyour'h's.' Never mind about its being proper. Whatever word you use that will bear a good sounding ' h,' let it have it. It sounds hedgerkated and as though yoo've been through your degrees, or whatever you call 'em. That's why I wear this mortar-board cap. There's w flavor of- college and university about it. Do you know anything about dentistry ? Not me. I'm a house, painter wheu^there's anything in that line stirring, which is for about three months out of the twelve. Where aid I get that lot of decayed teeth from I bought 'em up at the Cattle Market at Islington, where you can buy any mortal second-hand thing on Fridays. I bought very nigh half a peck of them for fifteen pence. Enough to give anybody the tooth-ache to look at 'em. 'Course they are. That's the purpose of 'em. They give the clue to lost of patter. It is not because I'm sellin' my specfic; in the streets of London,' says I, * that you must suppose, ladies and gentlemen that I ham heither hignorant hor hinexperienced. I give you hoptical hevid-t ence of the many hegscruciatin* hoper.a : tions I've performed on the masticatory horgans of the human frame. Every one of them teeth you see before you, both marlows and hinsisors, was drawn from the human jaw by this, hand, the hagony of which caused me to give

my thind to the invention I now ofter you. It is not honly the hagony of hextractiou,' it is the danger. of a fractured jawbone, which here is one in the bottle the young woman belonging to which was hcperated on a Guy's when I was walking the hospitals." And is that. a human jawbone?" I asked.him, pointing to the osseous specimen suspended in some liquid by a string. "Well, I don't mind telling you it's a sheep's," he replied- f rankle ; "but it's only to hillustrate the hargyment like, and it does just as well. What is my miraculous tincture made, of ? Come, now, that's coming*it#i-Kt£le too strong. You wouldn't gde'ss in a month /No, there's no opium in it. Opium, hey ! what", and get a profit qutjof penorths ! There's no harm in it. They say simple remedies are the best, and I'm blest if they could have a simpler one than mine. They might swallow a pailful of it and it wouldn't hurt 'em. Can it possibly do them any good 1 I'll tell you what, guv'ner" — and here th& proprietor of the miraculous toothache tincture grew serious, almost solemn-— " I assure you, I've seen it do 'em that good I've been perfectly thunderstruck. I've had 'em come here with their jaws bound up, and black 1 under the eyes with pain, and'l've rubbed their ' gums with my tincture, and they've been free from pain that minute." ".It must be faith," I suggested. "It must be something," returned the ex-liouse-painter with a glance at the bpttle that betrayed his consciousness -..that, the key,. to the mystery was not contained within them, " but it has often. beedo"pn'2zler to me, as I tell you, fair and honest." — Telegraph. ,/ .