midnight
The better you think of me , the better men and women you will find yourselves . I shall say nothing of my all-important aid on washing-days , though on that account alone I might call myself the household god of a hundred families . Far be it from me , also , to hint , my respectable friends , at the show of dirty faces which you would present without my pains to keep you clean . Nor will I remind you how often , when the midnight bells make you tremble for your combustible town , you have fled to the town-pump and found me always at my post firm amid the confusion and ready to drain my vital current in your behalf . Neither is it worth while to lay much stress on my claims to a medical diploma as the physician whose simple rule of practice is preferable to all the nauseous lore which has found men sick , or left them so , since the days of Hippocrates . Let us take a broader view of my beneficial influence on mankind . No ; these are trifles , compared with the merits which wise men concede to me -- if not in my single self , yet as the representative of a class -- of being the grand reformer of the age .