mountebank quotes

   I remember when our whole island was shaken with an earthquake some years ago, there was an impudent mountebank who sold pills which (as he told the country people) were very good against an earthquake.

-Joseph Addison
  In The Tatler, no.240, 21 Oct.

It is the story of a mountebank and his zany.

- Horace, 4th Earl of Orford Walpole
  Of Boswell's account of hisTour of the Hebrides with Dr Johnson. Letter to Henry Conway, 6 Oct. In The Correspondence of HoraceWalpole (Yale edition,1937^8).