Mercury No Cure

I preached in the evening at Lisburn. All the time I could spare here was taken up by poor patients. I generally asked, "What remedies have you used?" and was not a little surprised. What has fashion to do with physic? Why (in Ireland, at least), almost as much as with headdress. Blisters for anything or nothing were all the fashion when I was in Ireland last. Now the grand fashionable medicine for twenty diseases (who would imagine it?) is mercury sublimate! Why is it not a halter or a pistol? They would cure a little more speedily. 

The Journal of John Wesley