The Specific

THO' News-papers puff ev'ry Nostrum to town,
What Nostrum is like the Grape's Juice?
No Chymical Liquor that turns red to brown,
No Beaume de Vie, nor Eau de Luce.
As to Rouge, the rank practice, alas! is so rise,
The Beauty of Health it consumes,
But Wine is the Volatile Spirit of Life,
And brightens our natural Blooms.

The Balsam of Honey a tickling Cough stops,
To Maredant the Scurvy submits;
There's what's his Name's wonderful Viperine Drops,
And Henry for Hysteric Fits;
But Physic, like Music, bears Fashion's decree,
Of Modish Distempers they tell us;
Licentiates, or not so, yet ev'ry M. D.
Pronounces us Narvous or Bilous.

Pour Wine into Wounds you'll be cur'd in a jerk,
Religious that text to pursue,
Whene'er my mind's wounded, I draw a long Cork,
Sometimes my Prescription is Two.
The Doctor's a Dunce, down the sink dash the Slops,
Those Pipes we are going to start 'em;
Just draw off a Glass, they are Bacchus's Drops,
The Mixture is Secundum Artem.

As to Cuckoldom—that is a hurt to the Head,—
If Wives will be Harlots why let them,
An Absorbent we find in a Bottle of Red,
An Opiate by which we forget them.
Philosophers say,—but a fig for their Saws,
Such water-chill'd Maxims disown 'em;
Their Efficients I prove are deficient in Cause,
When I've my Scots Pint, Magnum Bonum.

Wine makes — aye, what won't it? it makes right and wrong,
'Tis Love, Wit, and Truth's Ventilator;
At once it locks up the most voluble Tongue,
At once turns a Mute to a Prater.
If fond of a Fair, Wine this Magic will shew,
Make but, like an Artist, your Trial;
In her it will silence the nerves which say no,
And raise you above a Denial.

More or less to the Scurvy all Men are a prey,
Quoth this, that, and t'other Physician:
More or less we're all mad, I will venture to say,
And the World's in a scurvy condition.
Good Wine makes good Blood, and good Blood keeps us sound,
So Recipe tantum sufficit;
For Madness, my friends, since the Remedy's found,
Let none be so mad as to miss it.