Note 54 — HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

This practice of Bishop Berkeley has been ridiculed with great point and effect, in a pamphlet entitled ‘A cure for the Epidemical Madness of drinking Tar Water,’ by Mr. Reeve; in which, addressing the Bishop, he says, “thus, in your younger days, my Lord, you made the surprising discovery of the unreality of matter, and now in your riper age, you have undertaken to prove the reality of a universal remedy; an attempt to talk men out of their reason, did of right, belong to that author who had first tried to persuade them out of their senses.” Tar water was also at one period considered to possess very considerable efficacy in Syphylis.