Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/46

 exhibition, which was some monster, or some giant, or some something, she would take us to eat ices, and then we were all sent home, with the tutors and governesses in a stew, lest we should be too late for a master, or for a God knows what.

"I have known many apothecaries cleverer than doctors themselves. There was Chilvers, and Hewson, and half-a-dozen names that I forget: and there was an apothecary at Bath that Mr. Pitt thought more of than of his physician. Why, I have seen Sir H obliged to give way to an apothecary in a very high family. 'We will just call him in, and see what he says:' and the moment he had written his prescription and was gone out of the house, the family would consult the apothecary, who perhaps knew twice as much of the constitution of the patient. 'You know, my lord, it is not the liver that is affected, whatever Sir H pretends to think: it is the spleen; for, did not we try the very same medicine that he has prescribed for above a week? and it did your lordship no good. You may just as well, and better, throw his draught away:' and sure enough it was done. Sir Richard Jebb the same.

"Do you think," continued she, "that the first physician in London is on terms of intimacy with the mylords he prescribes for? he prescribes, takes his guinea, and is off: or, if he is asked to sit down a