e resultant clotting of blood in the spleen) of
the illness.

Sections V-VIII, dealing with causes and cures, are less commonplace and
display some of Hill's eccentricities as a writer and thinker. He uses
the section entitled "Cures" as a means to peddle his newly discovered
cure-all, water dock,[10] which Smollett satirized through the mouth of
Tabitha Bramble in _Humphry Clinker_ (1771). Hill also rebelled against
contemporary apothecaries and physicians who prescribed popular
medicines--such as Berkeley's tar-water, Dover's mercury powders, and
James's fever-powders--as universal panaceas for the cure of the hyp.
"No acrid medicine must be directed, for that may act too hastily,
dissolve the impacted matter at once, and let it loose, to the
destruction of the sufferer; no antimonial, no mercurial, no martial
preparation must be taken; in short, no chymistry: nature is the shop
that heaven has set before us, and we must seek our medicine there"
(p. 24). However scientifically correct Hill may have been in minimizing
the efficacy of current pills and potions advertised as remedies for the
hyp, he was unusual for his time in objecting so strongly to them. Less
eccentric was his allegiance to the "Ancients" rather than to the
"Moderns" so far as chemical treatment (i.e., restoration of the humours
by chemical rearrangement) of hypochondriasis is concerned.[11] "The
venerable ancients," Hill writes, "who knew not this new art, will lead
us in the search; and (faithful relators as they are of truth) will tell
us whence we may deduce our hope; and what we are to fear" (p. 24).

Still more idiosyncratic, perhaps, is Hill's contention (p. 25) that the
air of dry, high grounds worsens the condition of the patient. Virtually
every writer I have read on the subject believed that onset of the hyp
was caused by one of the six non-naturals--air, diet, lack of sufficient
sleep, too little or too much exercise, defective evacuation, the
passions of the mind; and although some medical writers emphasized the
last of these,[12] few would have concurred with Hill that the fetid air
of London was less harmful than the clearer air at Highgate. All readers
of the novel of the period will recall the hypochondriacal Matt
Bramble's tirade against the stench of London air. Beliefs of the
variety here mentioned cause me to question Hill's importance in the
history of medicine; there can be no question about his contributions to
the advancement