CHAPTER VI.

BEN JONSON. Ben Jonson gives a description of the itinerant doctor in Queen Elizabeth’s time, who travelled the country, usually accompanied by a jester or zany, as he was called, who carried the box or chest containing his remedies. We see the professor with his copper rings, shining chain, better than gold but not quite so valuable, his yellow jewel, his dirty feather-embroidered suit, grave look, and starched beard.[45] Hush! he begins:— [45] Ben Jonson’s _Fox_, act ii., scene i. “Most noble gentlemen and my worthy patrons!—I have nothing to sell, little or nothing to sell, though I protest, I and my six servants are not able to make of my precious balsam so fast as it is fetched away from my lodging by the worthy men of the town. O health! health! the blessing of the rich, the riches of the poor, who can buy thee at too dear a rate? And since there is no enjoying the world without thee, for when a humid flux or catarrh, by the mutability of air, falls from your head into an arm or shoulder, take you a rose noble or an angel of gold and apply to the place affected; see what good effect it can work. No, no; to this blessed unguent, this rare extraction, that hath only power to dispose all malignant humours that proceed either of hot, cold, moist, or windy causes; to fortify the most indigest and crude stomach—aye, were it one that through extreme weakness vomited blood, applying only a warm napkin to the place after the unction and fricace; for the vertigoe in the head, putting out a drop into your nostrils, likewise behind the ears, a most sovereign and approved remedy; the _mal caduco_, cramps, convulsions, paralysies, epilepsies, tremor cordia, retind nerves, ill vapours of the spleen, and stoppings of the liver, or stops a dysentery, immediately cureth poison of the small guts, and cures melancholia, being taken and applied according to my printed recipe (shows his bill and vial, and the zany sings a song). It will cost you eight crowns, and has cured all the kings in Christendom. Many have attempted to make this oil, wasting thousands of crowns in the ingredients (for there go to it sixty several simples, besides some quantity of human fat for conglutination, which we buy of the anatomists); but when these practitioners come to the last decoction, blow, blow! puff, puff! it flies in fumes, poor wretches. “Gentlemen, honourable gentlemen, I will undertake by virtue of chemical art, out of the honourable hat that covers your head, to extract the four elements—that is to say, the fire, air, water, and earth, and return you your felt without burn or stain. You all know, honourable gentlemen, I never valued this ampulla or vial at less than eight crowns, but for this time I am content to be deprived of it for six; six crowns, then, is the price in courtesy. I know you cannot offer me less; take it or leave it, howsoever, both it and I are at your service (zany sings another song). “Well, I am in a humour at this time to make a present of the small quantity my coffer contains to the rich in courtesy, and to the poor for God’s sake; wherefore now mark, I asked you six crowns, and six crowns at other times you have paid me: you shall not give me six crowns, nor five, nor four, nor three, nor two, nor one, nor half a one, nor a shilling; sixpence it will cost you or £60. Expect no lower price, for I will not bate a jot; and this I take away as a pledge of your love, to carry something from amongst you to show I am not condemned.”