Mr. Patence, quack / by B.R. Townend.

  • Townend, B. R.
Date:
[1942]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mr. Patence, quack / by B.R. Townend. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/16 page 10
    “ Saturday, May the 31st, 1783. t At the DENTARIUM, in the Hay- Market, near Pall-Mall, PATENCE, the Great and Supreme DENTIST of the world, addresses mankind, that he continues, every day from ten to four, to clear the teeth and gums instan¬ taneously, from all manner of foulness, abolish their pains and diseases, and diseases of the whole mouth, whereby he so unprecedently preserveth the teeth for life. Likewise he supplies their loss, in ordinary and extraordin¬ ary cases, and the palate and the bones, superior in every respect to all the rest of mankind! Secondly to an absolute certainty, with two simple things, he can extricate the gout, dropsy, dissolve the stone, and every devaricated case of the scurvy! Thirdly, without vanity or self-praise, he is the most ingenious mechanic in the world! See extant, his organ work, clocks made of paper to beat seconds, without expansion, the chaise he rides in,-his four wheel car¬ riage, which went ten miles an hour without horses, without axle-trees, and ' above all without friction, and a vari¬ ety of other curious works he has made with his own hand, master of every sort of dance, both ancient and modern, author of a large Treatise on the Teeth, anatomical, generative, and physical. Operas, both serious and highly comic, and a work of three years study, in prose and verse, he in¬ tends shortly to publish by subscrip¬ tion, called the Pantheon of the World, with a description of all the Heathen Gods and Goddesses, and all our mod¬ ern ones now in London, the origin of King’s Bench Judges, Lawyers, Priests, and Musicians, and prove that all sorts of music sprung from a f—t. His eight weeks journey to Bath, and ode in praise of the King, Queen, and Family, whom God preserve! With a multi¬ tude of other things, principally to show the follies of this Perditinarian age, catching the manners as they daily fly. “To which will be added, Lucifer Triumphant, or Hell Broke Loose in the Hay-Market, on an opera night; with a song by old Lucifer and his eight Infernal State Ministers, suited to the times.” The year 1784 sees another diatribe against transplantation of teeth and the nefarious practices of his competitors: “ The dreadful calamities daily in¬ flicted on both sexes and coming under my inspection, such as death by trans¬ planting of Teeth from venereal per¬ sons, death 'by fracturing or luxation of the jaw-bones, often death by sep¬ aration of the arteries in drawing teeth, and uneasiness through life, many bringing their teeth in their hands, having been rooted out from their mouths by using the nostrums of per¬ fumes, going to Dentists whose outside appearance is all their skill, and Apothecaries, many of whom are as ignorant of the generation and consis¬ tence of the bones as the grave, to pre¬ vent the growing evils and that all persons may with safety and certainty be immediately relieved in the loss of teeth, teeth ready to drop from their sockets, pains, soreness, or diseases possibly to attend the mouth, even the loss of bones and deprivation of speech. . . . “ N.B.—Has in course of twenty-five years relieved 26,290 persons the prin¬ ciple part of whom had been under others, before they applied to him, he being generally the last refuge.” From this it would appear that Patence commenced practice in 1759. In the year 1784 Patence was troubled with an anonymous letter, but it did not seem* to upset him very much beyond stimulating his ready pen to one of its best efforts: “ The Curst Crow always thrives! “ MR. PATENCE’S Answer to the anonymous Letter sent him on Monday last, and the person who wrote it, no doubt, was thrown into a high fever, mad, on reading his advertisement, which was inserted in last Saturday’s Morning Chronicle. “WRETCHED BEING. “Your letter received, which is with malice cram’d. And genteel tell me—that I may be darn’d To everlasting, — Much obliged to you— Because your great thick skull can’t comprehend.
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