The Funny Side of Physic Part 29

A humorous druggist on Was.h.i.+ngton Street recently exposed some cakes of soap in his window with the pertinent inscription, "Cheaper than dirt."

In the country, you know, they keep almost everything in the apothecaries'

shops. We mentioned the fact in our chapter on Apothecaries. A wag once entered one of these apotheco-groco-dry-goods-meat-and-fish-market-stores, and asked the keeper,--

"Do you keep matches, sir?"

"O, yes, all kinds," was the reply.

"Well, I'll take a trotting match," said the wag.

The equally humorous druggist handed down a box of pills, saying,--

"Here, take 'em and trot."

_A sure Cure._--Henry Ward Beecher is currently reported as having once written to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes as to the knowledge of the latter respecting a certain difficulty. The reply was characteristic, and _encouraging_.

"Gravel," wrote the doctor, "gravel is an effectual cure. It should be taken about four feet deep."

The "remedy" was not, however, so remarkable as the following:--

"_Time and Cure._"--A good-looking and gentlemanly-dressed fellow was arraigned on the charge of stealing a watch, which watch was found on his person. It was his first offence, and he pleaded, "Guilty." The magistrate was struck with the calm deportment of the prisoner, and asked him what had induced him to take the watch.

"Having been out of health for some time," replied the young man, sorrowfully, "the doctor advised me to take something, which I accordingly did."

The magistrate was rather amused with the humor of the explanation, and further inquired why he had been led to select so remarkable a remedy as a watch.

"Why," replied the prisoner, "I thought if I only had the _time_, Nature might work the _cure_."

_Dye-stuff._--During the cholera time of 1864, in Hartford, Conn., a little girl was sent to a drug store to purchase some dye-stuff, and forgetting the name of the article, she said to the clerk, "John, what do folks dye with?"

"Die with? Why, the cholera, mostly, nowadays."

"Well, I guess that's the name of what I want. I'll take three cents'

worth."

The Hartford Courant told this story in 1869:--

"_Cholera fenced in._--You have noticed the flaming handbills setting forth the virtues of a cholera remedy, that are posted by the hundreds on the board fence enclosing the ground on Main Street, where Roberts' opera house is being erected. Well, there was a timid countryman, the other day, who had so far recovered from the 'cholera scare' as to venture into the city with a horse and wagon load of vegetables; and thereby hangs a tale.

He drove moderately along the street, when he suddenly spied the word 'Cholera,' in big letters on the new fence, and he staid to see no more.

Laying the lash on to his quadruped, he went past the handbills like a streak of lightning, went--'nor stood on the order of his going'--up past the tunnel, planting the vegetables along the entire route,--for the tail-board had loosened,--hardly taking breath, or allowing his beast to breathe, till he reached home at W.

"Safely there, he rushed wildly into the midst of his household, exclaiming,--

"'O, wife, wife, they _have_ got the cholera in Hartford, _and have fenced it in_.'"

_A Joke that's not a Joke._--A funny limb of the law had an office, a few years since, on ---- Street, next door to a doctor's shop. One day, an elderly gentleman, of the fogy school, blundered into the lawyer's office, and asked,--

"Is the doctor in?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FARMER'S ESCAPE FROM THE CHOLERA.]

"Don't live here," replied the lawyer, scribbling over some legal doc.u.ments.

"O, I thought this was the doctor's office."

"Next door, sir;" short, and still writing.

"I beg pardon, but can you tell me if the doctor has many patients?"

"_Not living_," was the brief reply.

The old gentleman repeated the story in the vicinity, and the doctor threatened the lawyer with a libel. The latter apologized, saying, "it was only a joke, and that no man could sustain a libel against a lawyer," when the doctor acknowledged the joke, and satisfaction, saying he would send up a bottle of wine, in token of reconciliation.

The wine came, and the lawyer invited in a few friends to laugh over the joke, and _smile_ over the doctor's wine. The seal was broken, the dust and cobwebs being removed, and the doctor's health drunk right cordially.

The excellence of the doctor's wine was but half discussed, when the lawyer begged to be excused a moment, caught his hat, and rushed from the room. Soon one of the guests repeated the request, and followed; then another, and another, till they had all gone out.

The wine had been nicely "doctored" with _tartar emetic_, the seal replaced and well dusted over, before being sent to the lawyer. The doctor was now threatened with prosecution; but after some consideration, the following brief correspondence pa.s.sed between the belligerents:--

"Nolle prosequi." Lawyer to doctor.

"Quits." Doctor to lawyer.

_Parboiling an Old Lady._--In Rockland, Me., then called East Thomaston, several years ago, there resided an old Thomsonian doctor, who had erected in one room of his dwelling a new steam bath. An old lady from the "Meadows," concluding to try the virtues of the medicated steam, went down, was duly arrayed in a loose robe by the doctor's wife, and with much trepidation and many warnings not to keep her too long, she entered the bath--a sort of closet, with a door b.u.t.toned outside. The steam was kept up by a large boiler, fixed in the fireplace which the doctor was to regulate. The old lady took a book into the bath, "to occupy her mind, and keep her from getting too nervous."

"Now it's going all right," said the doctor, when ding, ding, ding! went the front door bell. The doctor stepped noiselessly out, and learned that a woman required his immediate attention at South Thomaston, three miles away. He forgot all about the old lady fastened into the bath, and leaping into the carriage in waiting, he was whisked off to South Thomaston.

Meantime the steam increased, and the old lady began to get anxious. The moisture gathered on her book; the leaves began to wilt. The dampness increased, and soon the book fell to pieces in her lap. Great drops of sweat and steam rolled down over her face and body, and she arose, and tapping very gently at the door, said,--

"Hadn't I better come out now, doctor?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOO MUCH VAPOR.]

No reply. She waited a moment longer, and repeated the knock louder.

"Let me come out, doctor. I am just melting in here."