The reputation of St. Andre, who had previously been much in favour at court, was greatly injured by his conduct in this affair. The public attention had once before been directed to him by a mysterious circumstance; and his enemies did not fail now to advert to that circumstance, and to charge him with having himself played the part of an impostor. It appears that in February, 1724, he was summoned to visit a patient, whom he had never before seen. The messenger led him in the dark, through numerous winding alleys and passages, to a house in a court, where he found the woman for whom he was to prescribe. The man, after having introduced him, went out, and soon returned with three glasses of liquor on a plate, one of which St. Andre was prevailed on to take; but, “finding the liquor strong and ill-tasted, he drank very little of it.” Before he reached his home he began to be ill, and soon manifested all the symptoms of having taken poison. The government offered a reward of two hundred pounds for the detection of the offender, but he was never discovered. It was now asserted, by the enemies of St. Andre, that the story of having been poisoned was a mere fabrication, for the purpose of bringing him into practice. This, however, could not have been the case; for the report, signed by six eminent physicians, who attended him, abundantly proves that he was, for nearly a fortnight, in the utmost danger, and that, according to all appearance, his sufferings were caused by poison. We may, therefore, conclude that, though he was an egregious dupe, with respect to Mary Tofts, he was not, in this instance, an impostor. “For when a man beats out his brains, The devil’s in it if he feigns.” In 1749, three-and-twenty years after the exposure of Mary Tofts, there appeared, about the middle of January, the ensuing advertisement, which seems to have been intended to try how far the credulous folly of the town might be worked upon.