An itinerant medicine vendor and tooth-drawer with his company, performing operations and offering medicines for sale from a waggon to a crowd of people in Rome. Wood engraving, 1872.

Three musicians play their instruments as part of the performance. A sign in the background indicates that the setting is the Campo de' fiori, Rome. "Rome-A quack doctor drawing teeth Here we see quackery installed high above the heads of the gaping crowd. The throne is a carriage drawn by two horses, and shaded by a flaunting canopy of red and yellow, while beneath appears the writhing figure and agonised face of a patient from whom the doctor is drawing a tooth. Meanwhile a band of four musicians at the back is playing a solemn air. Let us examine the torturer. He is young, with black hair somewhat methodistical in arrangement, black beard, and black coat, which he affects like the rest of his profession, and a conspicuous watch-chain. But, strangest of all, he has lost one arm. Lucky it was not the right ! But what a terrible vice that left thing is, with a hook in the end of it. (N.B.-He does not take out the teeth with this.) At length the tooth is out. He holds the little troubler up aloft in triumph for an instant, then dashes it to the ground. The patient descends, and the crowd overwhelms him with inquiries as to whether it hurt, and with requests to see the place. Somebody else gets up directly. But before operating, the doctor descants awhile. He tinkles a bell, and the music stops. He then says that after finishing his studies at the universities of Milan, Padua, and Naples, he appears amongst the enlightened population of Rome, provided with remedies to cure all their diseases. Nothing comes amiss to him, from hernia to heartburn. He has discovered a wondrous herb in Africa, to which he points with a drawn sword, a specific for dropsy and deafness, half a franc the packet. By another from South America he cures bile and baldness-the same price. By analogy he argues that the cause of toothache is a worm, which pierces the tooth as maggots pierce apples, and he has fabricated a powder which on application draws out the maggot as effectually as ever pin did periwinkle, and the tooth is saved. (This is the renowned Erba Calamita per la conservazone dei denti.) For example-"Stand up, my man," says he to the patient. He applies the powder, and in a few seconds no less than three maggots are drawn from the cavity, not visible at our distance to the naked eye. The speech finished, he tinkles the bell again, and the music strikes up. Meanwhile an attendant displays to the awestruck gaze of the crowd a book of anatomical plates, in which the human form divine is represented in the most diabolical attitudes under the most revolting conditions. When it was explained to me that Gandolpho Ernesti--for that is the name of this Italian Sidrophel--had been a soldier, I understood at once the band and the sword. They were the suggestions of a true military instinct. All military bands, they say, are for the purpose of drowning the cries of the wounded, and so was his, for the doctor had been a soldier, and a gallant one too. In the second campaign of '58 against the Austrians, a cannon ball shattered his arm, and he obtained the medal for valour of the first class. After this he laid down the profession of arms, and from dealing wounds took to healing them. Even now he is an excellent swordsman, and for love of the weapon adopts it as a sort of magic wand of quackery. "—The graphic, loc. cit.