Page:The Scourge - Volume 5.djvu/29

The Hottentot Venus. 17

he has sunk his legitimate cognomen, and has adopted that of the honourable House of Caledon! He is now, therefore, no longer A- D, Esq. but plain Mr. A-purveyor for the depraved taste of the most depraved of Englishmen, as "the public exhibitor of his Hottentot Venus!" His person has undergone a still stranger metamorphosis! His sandy locks and eyebrows have been sacrificed, in compliment to his Venus's complexion perhaps-for a sable Brutus, and corresponding brows and whiskers, while infected by jealousy, like almost every other Argus of Venus, his eyes themselves are enveloped by a green halo, in the form of spectacles!

Sandy has a wife and a daughter in his native land in extreme indigence, while he is accompanied in his peregrinations, by the wife of another man; for the use of whom he pays her more infamous husband & con- siderable douceur!

I cannot close this brief but authentic sketch, without a few serious words of appeal to the military medical staff.

Does it not ill consort with the important obligation of the former, to tolerate (as can be proved to be the case) the naked exhibition of this Hottentot female; and even, the critical examination of her peculiar conformation and structure, by a duped public? Or can it accord with the public duty of the latter (the direction of the military medical staff,) to allow this degraded person, who is the mercenary author of so scandalous an exhibition, to disgrace the list of militaries surgeons, and to receive half-pay from his insulted country, as one of their number? MEDICUS. VOL. V. "