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6.: To his Mother - Adam Smith, Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence Vol. 6 Correspondence of Adam Smith [1740]

Edition used:

Correspondence of Adam Smith, ed. E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross, vol. VI of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987).

Part of: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 7 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


6.

To his Mother

Brougham, ii. 216; Rae 25.1

Oxford, 2 July 1744

I am quite inexcusable for not writing to you oftener. I think of you every day, but always defer writing till the post is just going, and then sometimes business or company, but oftener laziness, hinders me. Tar water is a remedy very much in vogue here at present for almost all diseases.2 It has perfectly cured me of an inveterate scurvy and shaking in the head.3 I wish you’d try it. I fancy it might be of service to you.

[1 ]Another excerpt.

[2 ]George Berkeley’s Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries Concerning the Virtues of Tar–Water (later prefixed by the title Siris) was first published in London in April 1744, and caused an immediate sensation. A correspondent of the Archbishop of York commented in June: ‘it is impossible to write a letter now without tincturing the ink with tar–water. This is the common topic of discourse, both among the rich and poor, high and low; and the Bishop of Cloyne has made it as fashionable as going to Vauxhall or Ranelagh.’ The Archbishop replied that he thought it a defect in Berkeley’s recommendation that he had made it a ‘catholicon’ (Letters from . . . Dr. Thomas Herring to William Duncombe, London, 1777).

[3 ]The first of many references to Smith’s illnesses.