different constitutions, may possibly be attended with such
different symptoms, that to find an infallible nostrum for the
curing any one distemper in every patient may be almost as
difficult as to find a panacea for the cure of all.

But even such a panacea one of the greatest scholars and best of
men did lately apprehend he had discovered. It is true, indeed,
he was no physician; that is, he had not by the forms of his
education acquired a right of applying his skill in the art of
physic to his own private advantage; and yet, perhaps, it may be
truly asserted that no other modern hath contributed so much to
make his physical skill useful to the public; at least, that none
hath undergone the pains of communicating this discovery in
writing to the world. The reader, I think, will scarce need to
be informed that the writer I mean is the late bishop of Cloyne,
in Ireland, and the discovery that of the virtues of tar-water.

I then happened to recollect, upon a hint given me by the
inimitable and shamefully-distressed author of the Female
Quixote, that I had many years before, from curiosity only, taken
a cursory view of bishop Berkeley's treatise on the virtues of
tar-water, which I had formerly observed he strongly contends to
be that real panacea which Sydenham supposes to have an existence
in nature, though it yet remains undiscovered, and perhaps will
always remain so.

Upon the reperusal of this book I found the bishop only asserting
his opinion that tar-water might be useful in the dropsy, since
he had known it to have a surprising success in the cure of a
most stubborn anasarca, which is indeed no other than, as the