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For a pinne-and-webbe* in the eye, a pearle, or any humour that comes
out of the head. My father laboured under this infirmity, and our
learned men of Salisbury could doe him no good. At last one goodwife
Holly, a poore woman of Chalke, cured him in a little time. My father
gave her a broad piece of gold for the receipt, which is this:-Take
about halfe a pint of the best white wine vinegar; put it in a pewter
dish, which sett on a chafing dish of coales covered with another
pewter dish; ever and anon wipe off the droppes on the upper dish till
you have gott a little glassefull, which reserve in a cleane vessell;
then take about half an ounce of white sugar candie, beaten and
searcht very fine, and putt it in the glasse; so stoppe it, and let it
stand. Drop one drop in the morning and evening into the eye, and let
the patient lye still a quarter of an hour after it.
I told Mr. Robert Boyle this receipt, and he did much admire it, and
tooke a copie of it, and sayd that he that was the inventor of it was
a good chymist. If this medicine were donne in a golden dish or
porcelane dish, &c. it would not doe this cure; but the vertue
proceeds, sayd hee, from the pewter, which the vinegar does take off.
* [The following definitions are from Bailey's Dictionary (1728):-"
Pin and Web, a horny induration of the membranes of the eye, not much
unlike a Cataract." "Pearl (among oculists), a web on the eye.
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