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mon people. This, or rather these scourges, for they are very numerous, are the mountebanks or travelling quacks, and thofe pretended phyficians in villages and country-places, both male and female, known in Swifferland by the name of Conjurers, and who very effectually unpeople it.The first of these, the mountebanks, without vifiting the fick, fell different medicines for their distempers, which are often attended with pernicious and dreadful effects. If we are vifited by one of these wandering caitiffs, it certainly proves fatal to fome of our inhabitants; and those who escape with their lives, are robbed of their money, and left in fo languid and inactive a state, as to be but little able to bear the hard exercise of a labourer. The refiding conjurers do not indeed carry away the current money of the country, but then the havoc they make among their fellowfubjects is without intermiffion. Without knowlege or experience, either of the powers of medicines or of the nature of the diseases of their unhappy patients, and offenfively armed with three or four active or even violent remedies, they commence practitioners; flight diforders they aggravate, others they render mortal. The robber who aflaffinates on the highway, leaves the traveller the refource of defending himself, and the chance of being aided by the arrival of other travellers: but the poifoner, who forces himself into the confidence of a fick perfon, is an hundred times more dangerous, and as juft an object of punishment.An ignorant, knavifh, lying and impudent fellow, will always feduce the grofs and credulous mass of people; otherwise their blindness and prejudice, with respect to thefe two forts of maleficent beings, would be inconceivable.

• Would but the common people either reason for themselves, or attend to the arguments of others, it were easy to difabuse them.--The very meaneft trade requires fome inftruction: a man does not commence a cobler, a botcher of old leather, without ferving an apprenticeship. We do not confide the mending, or cleaning a watch, to any who have not spent several years in learning how a watch is made: and yet the movements of the most complex, the most exquifite, the most eftimable machine upon earth, are boldly entrusted to the wild management of fome ignorant pretender.-Let a foldier who is either difcarded or a deferter from his regiment, a bankrupt, a difreputable ecclefiaftic, a drunken barber, or any other the most worthless creature, advertise that he mounts, fets, and fits up in perfection jewels and trinkets of every kind; if he is not known in the place; if no perfon las feen any of his work; or if he cannot produce authentic teftimonies of his ability and honesty; not a fingle individual will trust him with the leaft trifle. But if, inftead of profeffing himself a jeweller, he pafts himself up as a phyfician, the gaping multitude are extremely happy in his condefcending

condefcending to cheat them; and purchase at a high price, the pleafure of trufting him with their lives, the remainder of which he rarely fails to empoison.

In an excellent memoir, fays Dr. Tiffot, which will fhortly be published, on the population of Swifferland, we fhall find an important and very affecting remark, which strictly demonftrates the havoc made by thefe immedical magicians or conjurers; and which is this that in the common courfe of years, the proportion between the numbers and deaths of the inhabitants of any one place, is not extremely different in city and country: but when the very fame epidemical disease attacks the city and the villages, the difference is enormous; and the number of deaths of the former compared with that of the inhabitants of the villages, where the conjurer exercifes his bloody dominion, is infinitely more than the deaths in the city.

Our author endeavours to point out the most probable means of diminishing thefe evils, and then proceeds to the confideration of another extravagance; which is that blindness and facility, with which many fuffer themfelves to be impofed upon, by the pompous advertisement of fome catholicon, fome univerfal remedy, fome mighty fecret or noftrum. Perfons of a clafs or two above the populace do not care to run after a mountebank, from fuppofing they fhould depreciate themfelves by mixing with the herd. Yet if that very quack, inftead of coming among us, were fome foreign pretender, fays Dr. Tiffot, who refided in fome diftant city; if, inftead of pofting up his lying puffs at the corners of the streets, he fhould get them inferted in the gazettes and news-papers; if, inftead of felling his boasted remedies in perfon, he should eftablish fhops or offices for that purpofe in every city; and, finally, if, inftead of felling them twenty times above their real value, he should still double that price: then the wealthy citizen, and perfons of all ranks, and from almost every country, would quickly become his cuftomers.

Fortunately, fays our Author, for the human fpecies, but few of thefe noftrums have attained an equal reputation with Ailhaud's Powders, an inhabitant of Aix in Provence, and unworthy the name of a phyfician; who has over run Europe for fome years, with a violent purge, the remembrance of which will not be effaced before the extinction of all its victims. I attend now, and for a long time paft, feveral patients, whofe diforders I palliate, without hopes of ever curing them; and who owe their prefent melancholy ftate of body to nothing but the manifeft confequences of thefe powders; and I have actually feen, very lately, two perfons who have been cruelly poisoned by this boafted remedy.' Were the real effects of most of our fashionable and popular noftrums as fairly related, as their boasted Cures are cbtruded upon the public; they would be found to be

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either trifling and infignificant, or would deferve to be ranked with the Powders of Ailhaud. -There are fo many varieties in conftitutions ;-fuch a prodigious variety of diseases ;-the very fame disease fo different in different fubjects ;-and the different ftages of any one difeafe require fo very different a management, if judicioufly treated ;-that to advertise a general remedy for any one difeafe, or an univerfal remedy for every disease, is the groffeft impofition; and the deluded purchafer is as truly ridi culous, as the most romantic fearcher after the Philofopher's Stone. This unbounded credulity of the common people is really furprizing, but the blind confidence which perfons of a fuperior clafs repofe in fecrets and advertifed remedies, is ftill more furprizing.-Our Author however endeavours to folve thefe difficulties, and the laft obfervation he makes with this view is the following: that feven eighths of mankind are managed by, or follow the other eighth; and generally speaking, the eighth that are fo very forward to manage, are the leaft fit and worthy to do it. A man of excellent fenfe frequently fees only through the eyes of a fool, an intriguing fellow, or a cheat; in this he judges wrong, and his conduct must be so too.-A man of real merit cannot connect himself with those who are addicted to caballing; and yet fuch are the perfons, who frequently conduct others.' -It were to be wished, that the cavils and cabals here hinted at, did not infeft the faculty themfelves; and that in a liberal profeffion, a falfe pride or mean felfishness did not fome times fo overpower integrity and humanity, that the united abilities of confulting phyficians are not exerted for the good of the patient. But there are fome practitioners who defcend to a ftill more contemptible degree of meanness; and who by half speeches and bafe infinuations, poifon the ears, and mislead the judge ment of those, who have twice their understanding and know lege on any other fubject.-Pity it is, but that fuch hidden deftroyers, fuch ruthless devourers of tender and invaluable reputation, fhould be openly detected, expofed to the frown of honeft indignation, and trampled upon with contempt.

D.

A fuccinct Account of the Proceedings relative to the Discovery of the Longitude, from the Year 1714, to the prefent Time. Extracted from two Pamphlets written on that Subject, the one entitled, "An Account of the Proceedings, in order to the Difcovery of the Longitude, &c." and the other, "A Narrative of the Proceedings, relative to the Discovery of the Longi tude at Sea, &c.' The first in 4to, Pr. Is. The second in 8vo. Pr. 6d. Sandby.

a former Review, we promifed to give our readers an ac

to

the

the longitude by means of Mr. Harrifon's time-keeper, and fhould much fooner have fulfilled our engagement, had not fome difputes arofe between the commiffioners of longitude and the inventor, which have both delayed the long expected decifion of this weighty affair, and prevented the public from reaping the benefit of fo important a difcovery. Unhappily thefe difputes are not yet terminated; but we were unwilling to poftpone our account any longer, left our readers fhould imagine we had promifed what we never intended to perform.

It is well known that the longitude of any place is an arch of the equator, intercepted between the first meridian and the meridian of that place; and that this arch is proportional to the quantity of time that the fun requires to move from the one meridian to the other: confequently the difference of longitude between any two places may be eafily determined, provided the difference of time between them can be found. If therefore a machine can be fo conftructed as to keep equal time, without being affected by either heat or cold, or by the motion of the fhip, the difference of time between any place and that to which the time-piece was originally fet, may be found, and confequently the longitude, by a fimple reduction of the difference of time into degrees and minutes.

This is what Mr. Harrifon has attempted, and, according to the accounts before us, completed, to a degree of accuracy more than fufficient to entitle him to the largeft reward offered by parliament for the difcovery of the longitude.

The first who attempted making a time-piece for discovering the longitude at fea, was the celebrated M. Huygens of Zulichem; who, in 1664, invented the pendulum-watch, with which Major Holmes, in a voyage from the coaft of Guinea the following year, predicted the longitude of the island of Fuego, to a very great degree of accuracy. This fuccefs encouraged M. Huygens to improve the ftructure of his watches; an account of which was afterwards publifhed in the Philofophical Trapfactions No. 47. for the month of May 1669. But experient foon convinced that able mathematician, that unlefs fome expedient could be difcovered for preventing either heat or cold from having any effect on the regular motion of the machine, it could never anfwer the intention of difcovering the longitude, and this he was never able to perform.

In 1714, a bill was paffed for giving a reward to the perfon who fhould difcover the longitude at fea, proportioned to the degree of accuracy that might be attained by fuch method, viz, a reward of 10,000l. if it determines the faid longitude to one degree of a great circle, or fixty geographical miles; 15,000l. if it determines the fame to two-thirds of that distance; and 20,000l. if it determines it to half that diflance. It is added, of That

"That one moiety or half part of fuch reward, or fum, fhall "be due and paid when the faid commiffioners, or the major

part of them do agree, that any fuch method extends to the "fecurity of thips, within eighty geographical miles from the "fhores, which are places of the greatest danger; and the "other moiety, or half part, when a fhip, by the appointment "of the faid commiffioners, or the major part of them, shall "thereby actually fail over the ocean, from Great Britain to

any fuch port in the Weft-Indies, as thofe commiffioners, or "the major part of them, fhall chufe, or nominate for the ex"periment, without lofing her longitude beyond the limits "above-mentioned."

In confequence of this encouragement, Mr. John Harrison applied himself to the making of a pendulum-clock, which in the year 1726 was found to keep time fo exactly with the heavens, as not to err above a fecond in a month for ten years together. And foon after he added fuch improvements to his machine, as prevented its motion from being interrupted by the agitation and various accidents to which it must be expofed at fea.

Having brought his time-piece to this degree of accuracy, Mr. Harrifon obtained a certificate in the year 1735, figned by Dr. Halley, Dr. Smith, Dr. Bradley, Mr. John Machin, and Mr. George Graham, importing, that the principles of his machine promised a very great and fufficient degree of accuracy.

It was now thought neceffary to have recourfe to experience, and accordingly Mr. Harrifon's machine, in the year 1736, was put on board a man of war, and by its exact measure of time, in the fhip's return from Lisbon, corrected an error of almost a degree and a half, in the computations of the ship's reckoning. This fuccefs encouraged Mr. Harrison to contrive a fecond machine upon the fame principles, but of a conftruction something different; and that no encouragement might be wanting, the commiffioners of longitude gave him the fum of 12501. This machine was finifhed in 1739, and various experiments were made, by which it appeared that the motion of the timepiece was fufficiently regular and exact for finding the longitude of the fhip, within the nearest limits propofed by parliament.

But, not yet fatisfied with his fuccefs, Mr. Harrison undertook a third time-piece, still upon the fame principles, but of a more plain and fimple conftruction, of a much smaller fize, and lefs fubject to any disorder.

This time-piece was finished in 1758, and foon after a fourth, improperly called a watch; but being perfuaded that his third machine was fufficiently exact, to entitle him to the highest reward, mentioned in the act of Queen Anne, he applied to the commiffioners for orders to make a trial of that instrument to

fome port in the West-Indies, as directed by the said statute. REV. July, 1765.

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