Count Cagliostro, styled the luminary of modern impostors and debauchees, prepared a very common stomach elixir, which was sold at a most exorbitant price under the name of "_balm of life_" It was pretended, with the most unparalleled effrontery, that, by the use of this medicine, the count had lived above 200 years, and that he was rendered invulnerable against every species of poison. These bold assertions could not fail to excite very general attention. During his residence at Strasburg, while descanting, in a large and respectable company, on the virtues of his antidote, his pride met with a very mortifying check. A physician who was present, and who had taken part in the conversation, quitting the room privately, went to an apothecary's shop, and ordering two pills of equal size to be made, agreeably to his directions, suddenly appeared again before the count, and thus addressed him:--"Here, my worthy count, are two pills; the one contains a mortal poison, the other is perfectly innocent; choose one of these and swallow it, and I engage to take that which you leave. This will be considered as a decisive proof of your medical skill, and enable the public to ascertain the efficacy of your extolled elixir." The count took the alarm, made a number of apologies, but could not be prevailed upon to touch the pills. The physician swallowed both immediately, and proved by his apothecary, that they might be taken with perfect safety, being only made of common bread. Notwithstanding the shame of this detection, Cagliostro still retained numerous advocates by circulating unfounded reports, and concealing his real character by a variety of tricks. The inspired father Gassner, of Bavaria, ascribed all diseases, lameness, palsy, etc, to diabolical agency, contending from the history of Job, Saul, and others recorded in sacred writ, that Satan, as the grand enemy of mankind, has a power to embitter and shorten our lives by diseases. Vast numbers of credulous and weak-minded people flocked to this fanatic, with a view of obtaining relief which he never had the means to administer. Multitudes of patients, afflicted with nervous and hypochondriacal complaints, besieged him daily; being all stimulated by a wild imagination, eager to view and acknowledge the works of Satan! Men eminent for their literary attainments, even the natural philosophers of Bavaria, were hurried away by the stream, and completely blinded by sanctified imposture. It is no less astonishing than true, that so late as 1794, a Count Thun, at Leipzig, pretended to perform miraculous cures on gouty, hypochondriacal, and hysterical patients, merely by the imposition of his sacred hands. He could not however raise a great number of disciples in a place that abounds with so many sceptics and unbelievers.