it was wet they would pour the salve on it, and then scraping it up they would roll it into sticks with their fingers, and cut it into little pieces.
Howitt also describes seeing James Taylor, the head of the family, when he visited Whitworth, making his pills. In an old hat slung in front of him by a cord round his neck was his pill mass. Thus armed, he would walk up and down in front of his house nipping off bits of the mass and rolling them into pills with his fingers as he walked.
In his later years John Taylor sometimes visited patients in distant places. Once he went to attend a duchess at Cheltenham. She had an abscess which he opened and so relieved her at once. George III was staying at Cheltenham at the time, and heard of this skilful man. Later he sent for him to come to London to treat the Princess Elizabeth, who had pains in her head with fits of stupor. John is said to have cured her with his snuff. Having prescribed this and provided the patient with some, John Taylor turned to Queen Charlotte, who with her other daughters was in the room, and patting her on the back, said: "Well, thou art a farrantly (good-looking) woman to be the mother of all these straight-backed lasses." "Ah, Mr. Taylor," said the Queen, "I was once as straight-backed as any of them." John's son James was fond of telling this story.
Thurlow, Bishop of Durham, brother of Lord Chancellor Thurlow, was one of his patients, and John was once sent for to London to attend him. More than one eminent physician was in the room when Taylor arrived. "I won't say a word till Jack Hunter is here," said Dr. John; "he is the only man among you who knows
