Page:Chronicles of pharmacy (Volume 1).djvu/334

 consequently prevented gout. It was a remedy in all inflammatory disorders and fevers. It was a cordial which cheered, warmed, and comforted, with no injurious effects.

The nation went wild over this discovery. "The Bishop of Cloyne has made tar water as fashionable as Vauxhall or Ranelagh," wrote Duncombe.

The Bishop's book was translated into most of the European languages, and tar water attained some degree of popularity on the Continent. It owed no little of its success in this country to the opposition it met with from medical writers. The public at once concluded that they were very anxious about their "kitchen prospects," to use the symbolism of Paracelsus. Every attack on tar water called forth several replies. Berkeley himself responded to some of the criticisms by very poor verses, which he got a friend to send to the journals with strict injunctions to keep his name secret.

Paris in "Pharmacologia" refers to the tar water mania, asking "What but the spell of authority could have inspired a general belief that the sooty washings of rosin would act as a universal remedy?" It need hardly be pointed out that the general belief was rather a revolt against authority than an acceptance of it.

Dr. Young, the author of "Night Thoughts," wrote: "They who have experienced the wonderful effects of tar water reveal its excellences to others. I say reveal, because they are beyond what any can conceive by reason or natural light. But others disbelieve them though the revelation is attested past all scruple, because to them such excellences are incomprehensible. Now give me leave to say that this infidelity may