THE HESSIAN DOCTOR
From Brooklyn heights a Hessian doctor came,
Nor great his skill, nor greater much his fame:
Fair Science never called the wretch her son,
And Art disdained the stupid man to own.
He on his charge the healing work begun
With antmomial mixtures by the tun:
Ten minutes was the time he deigned to stay,
The time of grace allotted once a day:
He drenched us well with bitter draughts, tis true,
Nostrums from hell, and cortex from Peru:
Some with his pills he sent to Pluto's reign,
And some he blistered with his flies of Spain.
His Tartar doses walked their deadly round,
Till the lean patient at the potion frowned,
And swore that hemlock, death, or what you will,
Were nonsense to the drugs that stuffed his bill.
On those refusing he bestowed a kick,
Or menaced vengeance with his walking stick:
Here uncontrolled he exercised his trade,
And grew experienced by the deaths he made.
Knave though he was, yet candor must confess
Not chief physician was this man of Hesse:
One master o'er the murdering tribe was placed,
By him the rest were honored or disgraced
Once, and but once, by some strange fortune led,
He came to see the dying and the dead.
He came, but anger so inflamed his eye,
And such a faulchion glittered on his thigh,
And such a gloom his visage darkened o'er,
And two such pistols in his hands he bore,
That, by the gods, with such a load of steel,
We thought he came to murder, not to heal.
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