heat, made themselves ridiculous by
dreading to give for a Dose more than five, or six, or seven Grains: You
may take forty or fifty with no other Advantage or Alteration than your
Imagination shall raise; and with the same Effect, ten times as much
more. It may, with modern Observers, pass for a Sweater, and a Cordial,
when they have given it with good Cordials, and Sweaters, but the most
visible Operation it has, is seen when the Bill is paid. Our Physicians in
their private Conversations, talk of it as a thing altogether worthless;
but because the People are willing to be cheated with _Bezoar_ and
_Pearl_, they dare not entertain a Thought of undeceiving them, fearing
the Consequence to their own Disadvantage: And I pray with what Art can
the high Rate of Medicines be maintain'd, if the World could not be amused
with the Imagination of being kept alive in all the Distempers, by the
Force of these two?

_Pearl_ is a Disease in a Shell-Fish, as _Bezoar_ is in the _Quadruped_:
They are very different in Shape and Bulk, the whitest and most glittering
are most in Esteem; the sickly Fancy conceits it will revive the Blood as
it pleases the Eye; and that it will brisk up the Spirits and Mind, when
it reflects on its being dear and fashionable. But this has been despis'd
by the honest Physicians, who prescribe for the Cure of their Patients.
The famous _Plater_, after the Experience of a many Years Practice,
rejects the pretended Virtues of Pearl, or Metals, which have no Taste or
Smell, to give the least Pretence to rank them with the Vegetable
Alexipharmicks.

Most of our Writers are of his Sentiment, and give it only a common Place
with the others usually prescrib'd in the Heart-burning, or windy sour
Humour offending the upper Orifice of the Stomach: But the Shell of the
Fish that breeds them, pretends to, and is allow'd by all our best Authors
to have the same Virtues. Nature has been very liberal in this Sort of
_Alkali_; all the Shell-fish, all the Claws of Crabs, or the Tips, if you
please to value them most, the two Stones of the Craw-fish, and the Shells
of Eggs are directed frequently with the Pearl: The two Corals, _&c._ and
the numerous Earths of the absorbing Kind, the Chalk, the Marles, are
judged by many preferable to it, or are used with the same Success: So
that we have the greatest Reason to believe, that the debauched Practice
of the _English_ Preservers of Health have made use of it, with Design to
ext