“The Passions of the Mind have very great power on Mankind here, especially Hysterical Women and Hypochondriacal Men. These cannot but have a great share in the cause of several Diseases, some of the People living here being in such Circumstances, as not to be able to live easily elsewhere: add to this that there are not wanting some, as everywhere else, who have been of bad Lives, whereby their minds are disturbed, and their Diseases, if not rendered Mortal, yet much worse to cure than those who have sedate Minds, and Clear Consciences. On the same account it is that those who have not their Wills, Minds, and Affairs settled, in Distempers are much worse to be cur'd than other Men.” And he goes on to say that he considers many of the ailments of the people may be set down to “Debauchery” and their love of drinking. The Europeans, he says, are foolish to dress in the tropics as they would at home, and he tells how, going for a ride in the early morning, his periwig and “Cloths” were wet with dew. This shrewd observer prescribes the most drastic remedies. One good lady, who was going blind, he ordered to take “Millepedes alive, to one hundred in a morning, rising to that number by degrees, on the days when she took nothing else. By these means persisted in she first felt some relief, by degrees recovered the sight of one Eye and then of the other, so that she could at last read Bibles of the smallest print, and was entirely cured.” I am glad of that, for she had been bled by cupping, by scarification in the shoulders, blistered in the neck, and had had various other extremely disagreeable things done to her. But I hardly give the “Millepedes” credit, perhaps it was the abstinence from the many good things that came her way. He certainly makes diverting reading on the people who came to him with various ailments, though I doubt whether his patients found anything particularly amusing in his treatment of them. He carefully sorts them all out according to their rank, for people were much more punctilious then than now. He mentions “Loveney, a negro woman of Colonel Ballard's,” “one Barret,” “a lusty woman,” “one Cornwall's daughter,” “a Gentleman aged about 40 years,” “a young Gentlewoman aged about twelve years.” And he is extremely frank as to their ailments and their causes. Of a “Gentlewoman aged about fifty years,” he writes, “I attribute this disease to Wine Punch and Vinous Liquors, but she would not abstain, alledging that her Stomach was cold and needed something to warm it.” We sometimes hear that statement in these days!