The powers of Mr.Ward's remedies want indeed no unfair puffs of mine to give them credit;and though this distemper of the dropsy stands,I believe,first in the list of those over which he is always certain of triumphing,yet,possibly,there might be something particular in my case capable of eluding that radical force which had healed so many thousands.The same distemper,in 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 word implies,the dropsy of the flesh;and this was,at that time,a large part of my complaint.
After a short trial,therefore,of a milk diet,which I presently found did not suit with my case,I betook myself to the bishop's preion,and dosed myself every morning and evening with half a pint of tar-water.
It was no more than three weeks since my last tapping,and my belly and limbs were distended with water.This did not give me the worse opinion of tar-water;for I never supposed there could be any such virtue in tar-water as immediately to carry off a quantity of water already collected.For my delivery from this I well knew I must be again obliged to the trochar;and that if the tar-water did me any good at all it must be only by the slowest degrees;and that if it should ever get the better of my distemper it must be by the tedious operation of undermining,and not by a sudden attack and storm.