By these means,
and the assistance of flattery and assurance, they often insinuate
themselves into the acquaintance of strangers, and, by consulting
their dispositions, become necessary and subservient to their
prevailing passions. By their connection with apothecaries and
nurses, they are informed of all the private occurrences in each
family, and therefore enabled to gratify the rancour of malice, amuse
the spleen of peevish indisposition, and entertain the eagerness
of impertinent curiosity.
In the course of these occupations, which frequently affected the
reputation of our two adventurers, this whole body fell under the
displeasure of our hero, who, after divers consultations with his
friend, concerted a stratagem, which was practised upon the faculty
in this manner. Among those who frequented the pump-room, was an
old officer, whose temper, naturally impatient, was, by repeated
attacks of the gout, which had almost deprived him of the use of
his limbs, sublimated into a remarkable degree of virulence and
perverseness. He imputed the inveteracy of his distemper to the
malpractice of a surgeon who had administered to him, while he
laboured under the consequences of an unfortunate amour; and this
supposition had inspired him with an insurmountable antipathy
to all the professors of the medical art, which was more and more
confirmed by the information of a friend at London, who had told
him, that it was the common practice among the physicians at Bath
to dissuade their patients from drinking the water, that the cure,
and in consequence their attendance, might be longer protracted.
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