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The doctor says so * * * * * * * * * * * * * they sometimes Are soothsayers and always cunning men. Which doctor was it? Ben Jonson—Magnetic Lady, Act II., Sc. I.

A side thrust at the experimenters in the profession is found in Cymbeline.

I do know her spirit, And will not trust one of her malice with A drug of such damn’d nature. Those she has Will stupify and dull the sense awhile; Which first, perchance, she’ll prove on cats and dogs, Then afterwards up higher. Act I., Sc. V.

I can smile, and murder whiles I smile. Henry VI.—3d, Act III., Sc. II.

He has in several plays shown his contempt for the “prating mountebank” or “doting wizard.”

They brought one Pinch, a hungry, lean-fac’d villain, A mere anatomy, a mountebank, A thread-bare juggler, and a fortune-teller; A needy, hollow-ey’d, sharp-looking wretch, A living dead man: this pernicious slave, Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer, And, gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse, And with no face, as ’twere, out-facing me, Cries out I was possessed Comedy of Errors, Act V., Sc. I.