knewest honest Blomer, as pretty a physician he would have made as any
in England, had he kept himself from excess in wine and women; and he
always used to say, there was nothing at all but the pick-pocket parade
in the physician's art; and that the best guesser was the best physician.
And I used to believe him too--and yet, fond of life, and fearful of
death, what do we do, when we are taken ill, but call ye in? And what
do ye do, when called in, but nurse our distempers, till from pigmies you
make giants of them? and then ye come creeping with solemn faces, when ye
are ashamed to prescribe, or when the stomach won't bear its natural
food, by reason of your poisonous potions,--Alas, I am afraid physic can
do no more for him!--Nor need it, when it has brought to the brink of the
grave the poor wretch who placed all his reliance in your cursed slops,
and the flattering hopes you gave him.

The doctor was out of countenance; but said, if we could make mortal men
immortal, and would not, all this might be just.

I blamed the poor man; yet excused him to the physician. To die, dear
Doctor, when, like my poor friend, we are so desirous of life, is a
melancholy thing. We are apt to hope too much, not considering that the
seeds of death are sown in us when we begin to live, and grow up, till,
like rampant weeds, they choke the tender flower of life; which declines
in us as those weeds flourish. We ought, therefore, to begin early to
study what our constitutions will bear, in order to root out, by
temperance, the weeds which the soil is most apt to produce; or, at
least, to keep them down as they rise; and not, when the flower or plant
is withered at the root, and the weed in its full vigour, expect, that
the medical art will restore the one, or destroy the other; when that
other, as I hinted, has been rooting itself in the habit from the time of
our birth.