Page 2 Advertisements Column 3

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3162, 7 April 1879, Page 2

Says " Atticus" in the Melbourne Leader:—A practical foke has lately been played upon a metropolitan doctor, the result of which has been fraught with serious consequences to the dupe. The doctor, so the story goes, received a letter from another colony, in?*gdii3h the writer detailed the symptomswhich were affecting his health. He also re* ceived a phial of expectorated blood for examination, and was restoring him to health. "Esculapius" wrote back to say that the pitient was in a critical state; that ttle symptoms pointed to mental depression, and that while the impoverished quality of the blood told a tale of youthful excesses, it also pointed out to the existence -of acute tnberou* losis. While conveying these dismal tidings the doctor whispered a tale of hope if his instructions were carried out, intimating that for a . sum of forty guineas he would put the sick man on his legs again. A few weeks after the doctor received a notification from the supposed patient that the whole affair was a snare into which he had tumbled. The writer intimated that his ailment was suppositions, that he was in rude health, that the "impoverished blood" pointing to tuberculosis was drawn from the nose of an urchin of twelve years by a tap from a cricket ball. Not content with selling the doctor, the maladt imaginaire brought the matter before the Medical Society of Victoria by for* warding to it the whole of the correspondence that had passed. The society was about to investigate the unprofes* sional conduct of one of its members, when .Esculapius put himself beyond its jurisdiction by voluntarily severing his connection with the institution."

Novel Tickets.—A man who bought a thousand Havanna cigars recently, on being asked what ho was carrying, replied that they were tickets to a course of lee* lures to be given by his wife.