Copy 1, Volume 1

The adventures of Peregrine Pickle. In which are included memoirs of a Lady of quality / By T. Smollett ... with illustrations by George Cruikshank.

  • Tobias Smollett
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The adventures of Peregrine Pickle. In which are included memoirs of a Lady of quality / By T. Smollett ... with illustrations by George Cruikshank. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    length he was confined to his bed, where he lay blasphe- ming from morn to night, and from night to morn, though still more determined than ever to adhere to his former maxims. In the midst of his torture, which was become the com- mon joke of the town (being circulated through the industry of the physicians, who triumphed in his disaster), Peregrine, by means of Mr. Pipes, employed a country- fellow, who had come to market, to run with great haste, early one morning, to the lodgings of all the doctors in town, and desired them to attend the colonel with all imaginable despatch. In consequence of this summons, the whole faculty put themselves in motion ; and three of the foremost arriving at the same instant of time, far from complimenting one another with the door, each separately essayed to enter, and the whole triumvirate stuck in the passage. While they remained thus wedged together, they descried two of their brethren posting towards the same goal with all the speed that God had enabled them to exert ; upon which they came to a parley, and agreed to stand by one another. This covenant being made, they disentangled themselves, and, inquiring about the patient, were told by the servant that he had just fallen asleep. | Having received this intelligence, they took possession of his antechamber, and shut the door, while the rest of the tribe posted themselves on the outside, as they arri- ved ; so that the whole passage was filled, from the top of the staircase to the street-door; and the people of the house, together with the colonel’s servant, struck dumb with astonishment. The three leaders of this learned vang had no sooner made their lodgement good, than they began to consult about the patient’s malady, which every one of them pretended to have considered with great care and assiduity. The first who gave his opinion, said, the distemper was an obstinate arthritis ; the second affirmed, that it was no other than a confirmed p—x; and the third swore it was an inveterate scurvy. This diversity of opinions was supported by a variety of quotations from medical authors, ancient as well as modern ; but these
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