Turning toward my left hand, I saw a great many souls that were put up in gallipots, with _Assa fœtida_, _Galbanum_, and a company of nasty oils that served them for syrup. “What a damned stink is here,” cried I, stopping my nose. “We are now come undoubtedly to the devil’s house of office.” “No, no,” said their tormentor, (which was a kind of a yellowish complexioned devil) “’tis a confection of apothecaries. A sort of people, that are commonly damned for compounding the medicines by which their patients hoped to be saved. To give them their due, these are your only true and chemical philosophers; and worth a thousand of Raymund Lullius, Hermes, Geber, Ruspicella, Avicen, and their fellows; ’tis true, they have written fine things of the transmutation of metals; but did they ever make any gold? Or if they did, we have lost the secret. Whereas your apothecaries, out of a little puddle-water, a bundle of rotten sticks, a box of flies—nay out of toads, vipers, and a Sir Reverence itself, will fetch ye gold ready minted, and fit for the market; which is more than all your philosophical projectors ever pretended to. There is no herb so poisonous, (let it be hemlock) nor any stone so dry, (suppose the pumice itself) but they’ll draw silver out of it. And then for words, ’tis impossible to make up any word out of the four-and-twenty letters, but they’ll show ye a drug, or a plant of the name; and turn the alphabet into as good money as any’s in your pocket. Ask them for an eye-tooth of a flying toad; they’ll tell ye, yes, ye may have of it, in powder; or if you had rather have the infusion of a tench of the mountains, in a little eel’s milk, ’tis all one to them. If there be but any money stirring, you shall have what you will, though there be no such thing in nature. So that it looks as if all the plants and stones of the creation had their several powers and virtues given them, only for the apothecaries’ sakes; and as if words themselves had been only made for their advantage. Ye call them apothecaries, but instead of that, I pray’e call them armourers; and their shops, arsenals; are not their medicines as certain death as swords, daggers, or muskets? while their patients are purged and blooded into the other world, without any regard either to distemper, measure, or season.