DOCTOR BONOMI. By chance An alchymist doctor whose fortunes were down, In France. He hired a house, and affixed to the door A name that the people had never before Seen. The doctor was upright and stiff as a wall, And lean. Now into his house from a waggon was brought, Whilst a crowd gathered staring, a monstrous retort; And sweating and swearing, a staggering porter Bore in a leviathan pestle and mortar ; Then hideous syringes, alchymical fixtures, And great podgy bottles of all-coloured mixtures. A flutter Among the gazers, who deemed every drop Explosive material to go off with a pop And splutter. Therefore the people kept back in the street Should the doctor a tendency show to be loading The squirts, or the bottles give signs of exploding By fizzing. Some gazed in mute awe on his spectacles big, Were quizzing. Unheeding, the doctor paced solemnly round And vast. But when all his chattels were carried within To the last, The physician's grave features relaxed to a grin, As he said, 'That will do; I think now I have nearly all' For this little city, the needful material.' Now round with the speed of a fire, the report Of the squirts, the great bottles, the tubes, the retort, Flew ; And from every quarter the inquisitive pour, Men, and of women, of course, a great store, And the multitude fast round the alchymist's door Grew. Sudden, the crier emerged with a horn, The chief Has come, Psalmanazar Bonomi, Physician extraordinary to the King of Dahomy. In brief This alchymist-doctor of learn'd Salamanca (Expressive though vulgar the term) is a spanker. Now vain the delusion of him who supposes The doctor sets plasters, lets blood, or gives doses, Applies leeches, pounds powders, rolls pills, spreads a blister : Far other, good people, the practice of Mister Bonōmi. Don't dream, if you're ill, for this doctor to send, Whatever your malady, be well assured, You must not seek him, if you want to be cured. Should he, like a common hack doctor, go roundHe the elixir of life who has found In Dahomy? No! he visits not prince, noble, burgher, or peasant. Why should he? A score Of doctors and more Are set up in this poky old city at present. So those who have croup, And those with the hoop, And those who have cholera, liver complaint, Let them by calling Doctor Bonomi bother. Or by flattery, to bring him to visit, for he Won't. But, when you have found all physicians to fail, When the pulse beats no more, and the last sigh is sped, When the last tear has trickled, the last word been said, When Rigid the muscles, when motionless lies The patient, sans breath, and sans ears, and sans eyes, Sans feeling, sans thinking, sans all things, in bed; In a word, when you know that the patient is dead,— Then Send for the illustrious Doctor Bonomi, For then, in his own graphic words, "All will know me To be The Only Physician who has any science, The only Bonomi, with none in alliance, Who sets all the doctors of France at defiance." So he Urges all those of high rank or low station By mortality robbed of a darling relation, Father or mother, Sister or brother, Uncle or aunt, wife, husband, or lover, And the same from the power of the grave would recover, |