This man, according to the custom of his class, was in the habit of publishing circumstantial and minute accounts of his cures. Of course his statements were a tissue of untruths, with just the faintest possible admixture of what was not altogether false. His plan was to get hold of some poor person of imperfect vision, and, after treating him with medicines and half-crowns for six weeks, induce him to sign a testimonial to the effect that he had been born stone-blind, and had never enjoyed any visual power whatever, till Providence led him to good Dr. Grant, who had cured him in little more than a month. This certificate the clergyman and churchwardens of the parish, in which the patient had been known to wander about the streets in mendicancy, were asked to attest; and if they proved impregnable to the cunning representations of the importunate suitors, and declined to give the evidence of their handwriting, either on the ground that they had reason to question the fact of the original blindness, or because they were not thoroughly acquainted with the particulars of the case, Dr. Grant did not scruple to sign their names himself, or by the hands of his agents. The _modus operandi_ with which he carried out these frauds may be learned by the curious in a pamphlet, published in the year 1709, and entitled "A Full and True Account of a Miraculous Cure of a Young Man in Newington that was Born Blind." But the last century was rife with medical quacks. The Rev. John Hancocke, D.D., Rector of St. Margaret's, Lothbury, London, Prebendary of Canterbury, and chaplain to the Duke of Bedford, preached up the water-cure, which Pliny the naturalist described as being in his day the fashionable remedy in Rome. He published a work in 1723 that immediately became popular, called "Febrifugum Magnum; or, Common Water the best Cure for Fevers, and probably for the Plague."