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But this mental imbecility is not characteristic of any age or country. England has, indeed, by a late continental writer,^[33] been accused of possessing a larger share of credulity than its neighbours, and it has been emphatically called “The Paradise of Quacks,” but with as little truth as candour. If we refer to the works of Ætius, written more than 1300 years ago, we shall discover the existence of a similar infirmity with regard to physic. This author has collected a multitude of receipts, particularly those that had been celebrated, or used as Nostrums,^[34] many of which he mentions with no other view than to expose their folly, and to inform us at what an extravagant price they were purchased. We accordingly learn from him that the collyrium of Danaus was sold at Constantinople for 120 numismata, and the cholical antidote of Nicostratus for two talents; in short, we shall find an unbounded credulity with respect to the powers of inert medicines, from the elixir and alkahest of Paracelsus and Van-Helmont, to the tar water of bishop Berkeley, the metallic tractors of Perkins, the animal magnetism of Miss Prescott, and may I not add, with equal justice, to the nitro-muriatic acid bath of Dr. Scott? The description of Thessalus, the Roman empiric in the reign of Nero, as drawn by Galen, applies with equal fidelity and force to the medical Charlatan of the present day; and, if we examine the writings of Scribonius Largus, we shall obtain ample evidence that the same ungenerous selfishness of keeping medicines secret, prevailed in ancient no less than in modern times; while we have only to read the sacred orations of Aristides to be satisfied, that the flagrant conduct of the Asclepiades, from which he so severely suffered,^[35] was the very prototype of the cruel and remorseless frauds, so wickedly practised by the unprincipled Quack Doctors and advertising “Medical Boards,” of our own times: and I challenge the apologist of ancient purity to produce a more glaring instance of empirical effrontery and success, in the annals of the nineteenth century, than that of the sacred impostor described in the Alexander of Lucian, who established himself in the deserted temple of Esculapius, and entrapped in his snares some of the most eminent of the Roman senators.