Genre:

Ballad, Drollery

Subjects:

Race, Disease, Medical Practitioners, Medical Treatment, Quackery

    Pompey, a black servant, appears as an apparition to his white lover, Phoebe, to explain the circumstances of his death. Having contracted a fever, his master sent for a doctor; but 'though to physic he was bred, / And pass'd at Surgeon's Hall, / To make his post a sinecure / He never cured at all!' (239). The doctor thought his case looked 'very black' and prescribed cayenne and gamboge, and then madder and turmeric, but without turning his fever 'To Scarlet or to Yellow', and without preventing his 'dying black' (239–40).