obliged to call her upstairs again and give her his box of physic for
nothing, which perhaps, too, was good for nothing when she had it.

But to return to the people, whose confusions fitted them to be imposed
upon by all sorts of pretenders and by every mountebank. There is no
doubt but these quacking sort of fellows raised great gains out of the
miserable people; for we daily found the crowds that ran after them were
infinitely greater, and their doors were more thronged, than those of
Dr. Brooks, Dr. Upton, Dr. Hodges, Dr. Berwick, or any, though the most
famous men of the time; and I was told that some of them got five
pounds[66] a day by their physic.

But there was still another madness beyond all this, which may serve to
give an idea of the distracted humor of the poor people at that time,
and this was their following a worse sort of deceivers than any of
these; for these petty thieves only deluded them to pick their pockets
and get their money (in which their wickedness, whatever it was, lay
chiefly on the side of the deceiver's deceiving, not upon the deceived);
but, in this part I am going to mention, it lay chiefly in the people
deceived, or equally in both. And this was in wearing charms,
philters,[67] exorcisms,[68] amulets,[69] and I know not what
preparations to fortify the body against the plague, as if the plague
was not the hand of God, but a kind of a possession of an evil spirit,
and it was to be kept off with crossings,[70] signs of the zodiac,[71]
papers tied up with so many knots, and certain words or figures written
on them, as particularly the word "Abracadabra,"[72] formed in triangle
or pyramid; thus,--

A B R A C A D A B R A
A B R A C A D A B R