As I was impatient to know
the occasion and nature of her calamity, she gave me to understand,
that she was a woman of the town by profession; that in the course
of her adventures she found herself dangerously infected with
a distemper, to which all of her class are particularly subject;
that her malady gaining ground every day, she became loathsome to
herself and offensive to others: when she resolved to retire to
some obscure corner where she might be cured with as little noise
and expense as possible; that she had accordingly chosen this
place of retreat, and put herself into the hands of an advertising
doctor, who having fleeced her of all the money she had, or could
procure, left her three days ago in a worse condition than that in
which he found her; that except the clothes on her back, she had
pawned or sold everything that belonged to her to satisfy that
rapacious quack, and quiet the clamour of her landlady, who still
persisted in her threats to turn her out into the street. After
having moralised upon these particulars, I proposed that she should
lodge in the same room with me, an expedient that would save some
money: and assured her, I would undertake to cure her as well as my
own, during which she should partake of all the conveniences that
I could afford to myself.
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