airing of their cure. In
short, it was as usual for men of distempered brains to take a voyage
to Anticyra in those days as it is in ours for persons who have a
disorder in their lungs to go to Montpellier.

The prodigious crops of hellebore with which this whole island abounded
did not only furnish them with incomparable tea, snuff, and Hungary
water, but impregnated the air of the country with such sober and
salutiferous steams as very much comforted the heads and refreshed the
senses of all that breathed in it. A discarded statesman that, at his
first landing, appeared stark, staring mad, would become calm in a
week's time, and upon his return home live easy and satisfied in his
retirement. A moping lover would grow a pleasant fellow by that time he
had rid thrice about the island: and a hair-brained rake, after a short
stay in the country, go home again a composed, grave, worthy gentleman.

I have premised these particulars before I enter on the main design of
this paper, because I would not be thought altogether notional in what
I have to say, and pass only for a projector in morality. I could quote
Horace and Seneca and some other ancient writers of good repute upon
the same occasion, and make out by their testimony that our streets are
filled with distracted persons; that our shops and taverns, private and
public houses, swarm with them; and that it is very hard to make up a
tolerable assembly without a majority of them. But what I have already
said is, I hope, sufficient to justify the ensuing project, which I
shall therefore give some account of without any further preface.

1. It is humbly proposed, That a proper receptacle or habitation be
forthwith erected for all such persons as, upon due trial and
examination, shall appear to be out of their wits.

2. That, to serve the present exigency, the college in Moorfields be
very much extended at both ends; and that it be converted into a
square, by adding three other sides to it.

3. That nobody be admitted into these three additional sides but such
whose frenzy can lay no claim to any apartment in that row of building
which is already erected.

4. That the architect, physician, apothecary, surgeon, keepers, nurses,
and porters be all and each of them cracked, provided that their frenzy
does not lie in the profession or employment to which they shall
severally and respectively be assigned.

_N.B._ It is thought fit to give the foregoing notice, that none ma