Note 71 — HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

This was the favourite remedy of Dr. Andrew Boorde, who practised physic in Hampshire, and in his work printed in the black letter in London, entitled a ‘Breviarie of Health,’ he advises for a tooth-ache depending upon worms, ‘a candell of waxe with Henbane seeds, which must be lighted so that the perfume of the candell do enter into the tooth.’ This said Dr. Andrew Boorde is too important a personage to be passed over without some farther notice in this place, being no less than the Founder of that dignified class of the medical fraternity, better known by the name of Merry Andrews. Dr. Andrew Boorde lived in the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Queen Mary, and was in the constant habit of frequenting fairs and markets, at which he harangued the populace publicly: his speeches were extremely humourous and occasioned considerable mirth; his successors in this same line naturally endeavoured to imitate his bright example, and hence this class of itinerant quacks obtained the generic appellation of Merry Andrews. Since the humiliating triumph of Quackery displayed at the Freemason’s tavern, under the presidency of the member for Coventry, and more recently at Margate, there is reason to believe that this class of itinerant mountebanks will assume a new and more dignified appellation, and that in commemoration of the services of their philosophical president, the worthy member above stated, they will in future be designated by the name of Ranting Peters.