One physician conceived that gout originated from an effervescence of the synovia of the joints with the vitriolated blood: whence he recommended alcohol for its cure: a remedy for which the court of aldermen ought to have voted him a medal. A more ancient practitioner who believed that the finger of St. Blasius was very efficacious “for removing a bone which sticks in the throat,” maintained that gout was the “grand drier,” and prescribed a remedy for it which the patient was to use for a whole year, and to observe the following diet each month: in September he must eat and drink milk; in October he must eat garlic; in November he is to abstain from bathing; in December he must eat no cabbage; in January he is to take a glass of pure wine in the morning; in February to eat no beef; in March to mix several things both in eatables and drinkables; in April not to eat horse-radish; nor in May the fish called Polypus; in June he is to drink cold water in a morning; in July to avoid venery; and lastly, in August to eat no mallows. A third physician deduced all diseases from inspissation of the fluids; hence he attached the highest importance to diluent drinks, and believed that tea, especially, is a sovereign remedy in almost every disease to which the human frame is subject: “tea,” says Bentakoe, who is loudest in his praises of this panacea, and who, as Blumenback observes, ‘deserved to have been pensioned by the East India Company for his services,’ “tea is the best, nay, the only remedy for correcting viscidity of the blood, the source of all diseases, and for dissipating the acid of the stomach, as it contains a fine oleaginous volatile salt, and certain subtle spirits which are analogous in their nature to the animal spirits. Tea fortifies the memory and all the intellectual faculties: it will therefore furnish the most effectual means of improving physical education. Against fever there is no better remedy than forty or fifty cups of tea swallowed immediately after one another; the slime of the pancreas is thus carried off.”