INFALLIBLE CORDIALS.
THE twin stars in the curative world of our Transantlantic bre- thren, at the present moment, are Dr. SWAIM and Dr. POTTER. SWAIM is inventor of the Panacea, POTTER of the Catholicon. The former hoists as his sign, in the New 'York Advertiser, three bottles, modestly ticketed, "Swaim's Panacea, Philad—a." The more learned and ambitious POTTER has called mythology to his aid, and sports on his shield a Hercules slaying the Hydra : half-a- dozen of heads are twisting and hissing on the ground, and three dr four most truculent looking fellows are cresting and cursing, but of course to no purpose, against the Catholicon, or rather its emblem, the club of the demigod, that is about to light on their crowns and stretch them alongside of their comrades. SWAIM has but one case, but that is a thumper. The patient, a female, about thirty or thirty-two years of age—perhaps thirty-three—had lost the whole of one eye and three-fourths of the other, all the nose, and the better halt of the mouth—the tongue luckily was uninjured. Dr. SWAIM was introduced to this fragment of humanity; and, with the modest intrepidity of a great man, exclaimed, " I cannot restore the lost eye nor replace the lost nose—but I will cure the other eye and the mouth in a twinkling!" He said it, and he di&! it, as old General FAWCETT of the Invincibles has it—the woman' was cured ! POTTER'S cases make up in number what they lack: in length—he has three to SWAIM'S one. The first is that of Battle, who had fought with a tickling cough for—sixty-five' years ! She was cured by the time she had finished her third botle. The second case is Dolly Bender's. Dolly had stooped under toe. rheunzatiz for fifteen years, until she was so bent by its infliction% that a trundling-hoop was a straightgoing Christian compared with Dolly's obliquity. A couple of bottles made Dolly as straight in the back as a Prussian grenadier. The last case is that of Thomas Topkins, whose sore throat had kept him from eating for—ts twelvemonth. Topkins topped it over inflammation, and starva- tion, and a nation of other evils, by the time he had toped a bottle. It might at first sight seem a matter of indifference to which of these great benefactors of the human race a fellow who had a. mind to live for four or five hundred years had recourse—but here comes the rub : POTTER'S patients had swallowed heaven knows how many bottles of the Panacea, to no purpose ; and SWAIM'S: had -gulped down as many measures of the Catholicon, with equal effect : so that even SWAIM may fail, and POTTER does not always succeed. There is, still, however, a comfort in store--if the one can- not cure you, the other will : so our readers, who wish to enjoy the mellow wisdom of the SPECTATOR to the year 2067, (when it is our intention to resign the management of it) must as speedily as possible send to the original venders for a due supply of both cordials, and keep to that which, on a fair trial, shall best suit itself to their respective stomachs.
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