Mr. Heron, the author of a "Journey through Part of Scotland," made in the year 1793, observes that in his day "about two hundred persons afflicted in this way are annually brought to try the benefits of its salutary influence. These patients," he continues, "are conducted by their friends, who first perform the ceremony of passing with them thrice round a neighbouring cairn; on this cairn they then deposit a simple offering of clothes, or perhaps of a small bunch of heath.... The patient is then thrice immerged in the sacred pool; after the immersion he is bound hand and foot, and left for the night in a chapel which stands near. If the maniac is found loose in the morning, good hopes are conceived of his full recovery. If he is still bound, his cure remains doubtful. It sometimes happens that death relieves him during his confinement from the troubles of life."[23] An Englishman who visited the spot five years afterwards (1798) says the patient was fastened down in the open churchyard on a stone all the night, with a covering of hay over him, and St. Fillan's bell put over his head. The people believed that wherever the bell was removed to, it always returned to a particular place in the churchyard next morning. "In order to ascertain the truth of this ridiculous story, I carried it off with me," continues this English traveller. "An old woman, who observed what I was about, asked me what I wanted with the bell, and I told her that I had an unfortunate relation at home out of his mind, and that I wanted to have him cured. 'Oh, but,' says she, 'you must bring him here to be cured, or it will be of no use.' Upon which I told her he was too ill to be moved, and off I galloped with the bell." To make this story complete, I should add that the son of this gentleman, residing in Hertfordshire, restored to Scotland this interesting relic, after the lapse of seventy-one years, namely, in 1869. At Struthill, in Stirlingshire, was a well famous for its healing virtues in madness. "Several persons," says Dalyell, "testified to the Presbytery of Stirling in 1668, that, having carried a woman thither, they had stayed two nights at an house hard by the well; that the first night they did bind her twice to a stone at the well, but she came into the house to them, being loosed without any help; the second night they bound her over again to the same stone, and she returned loosed; and they declare also, that she was very mad before they took her to the well, but since that time she is working and sober in her wits." He adds that this well was still celebrated in 1723, and votive offerings were left; but no one then surviving knew that the virtues of the stone were in request. The chapel itself was demolished in 1650, in order to suppress the superstitions connected with this well.[24]