University of Virginia Library

Yesterday, in company with my friend
B********, I visited a celebrated artificer
of artificial legs, and was highly
amused—not merely with the cork pedestals
which, by the help of a steel metatarsus,
were almost as near an imitation
of a natural foot as a barber's block is to

the “human face divine” of some of the
inhabitants of this city, but it was delightful
to hear the artist descant upon the
excellences of his ware; in truth, he had
almost persuaded me to submit to amputation,
with the same readiness with which
a young lady submits her fine tresses to
the scissors of the barber, to be replaced
by a fashionable wig.

If this fellow had lived in the days of
Richard the Third, how readily might
that deformed tyrant have cheated Shake.
spear of some of the finest descriptions in
his celebrated tragedy. By the assistance
of this admirable artist he might have rivalled
Edward the First in shanks, and in
lieu of his hunch have equipped himself
with a back modelled from some Apollo
of Belvidere, or torso of Hercules—and
thus have confirmed the testimony of the
Countess of Desmond, and reduced
Horace Walpole's historical doubt into
certainty.

The artist insisted upon showing us a
large file of letters, received from his customers,
gratefully acknowledging the utility
and beauty of his limbs, and pointing out
certain advantages which had been discovered
by practice. B********, who is
somewhat of a wag, mentioned that he had
lately received a letter from a friend in
Jamaica, who had the felicity of being
supported by a cork leg from this repository.
His West Indian friend, he observed,
to his great surprise and comfort, had discovered
a wooden-leg to be an infallible
preservative against the sting of a mosquito—and
that he was much envied, on
this account, by the other inhabitants of
the island. As this was an unheeded property
in his chisselled flesh, the artist
listened with great attention; indeed, he
received it with such marked complacency
that, when we returned to my lodgings,
B******** threw the statement into the
form of a certificate, and sent it to him—
but having, unfortunately, added another

certificate, from an English officer in
Canada, stating that wooden legs bade defiance
to frost and foot-ball, the fellow, I
conjecture, in the London phrase, “smoked
“the quiz,” and the certificates were not
published.

But, of all the quacks who play upon
English credulity, recommend me to Mr.
John Perkins, formerly cook to the noble
Lords Gower and Milbourne. He has
published a book entitled “Every woman
“her own Housekeeper, or the Ladies'
“Library;” and being sensible, as, indeed,
every man of common sense must
be, that whoever eats of his made dishes
would soon have occasion for physic, he
has, very considerately, included in his
book all the eminent nostrums and quack
medicines of the day, with definitions of
those diseases which are the necessary
consequence of intemperance; and, for
convenience, has arranged his dishes and
diseases alphabetically, so that, as you
turn his pages and cast your eyes on the

heads of his chapters, you might, at first
view, imagine the book to be an ethical
work, exhibiting the dreadful consequences
of a life devoted to intemperance, or
a satire upon good eating, for the arrangement
of this culinary Juvenal presents the
reader with

Apple-pye and Asthma,
Wine and Vomiting,
Potted Pigeons and Purges,
Custards and Colic,
Gravies and Gout,
Ragouts and Rheumatism,
Confectionaries and Consumption,
Jellies and Jaundice,
Soups and Sciatica,
Sauces and Scurvy,
Pickles and Piles,
Roasting-pigs and Pills,
Fricasees and Fevers,
Appetite and Apoplexy, and,
Drams and Death.

The apparent necessity, and peculiar
convenience, of a book of this kind, produced

so rapid a sale that nine editions
have been published within a few years.
The English epicure, with this precious
book before him, may indulge to plethora,
and set disease and death at bay: he may
adopt the language of Cato, in Addison's
celebrated soliloquy, and exclaim

[The remainder of this letter consisted
of a description of the English political
quacks, but as it contained certain pointed
observations which might be thought, by
some, to deviate from the author's accustomed
candour, it was deemed expedient
to omit it. The Editors.]