Adam Smith, Bishop Berkeley, and tar water

Act I: “Tar Water” (Balliol College, Oxford) [*] Adam Smith was enrolled in Balliol College at Oxford University from July 1740 until August 1746. During his Oxford years, the young scholar wrote to his mother on several occasions.[1] Although most of these letters are mundane,[2] two of them are worth taking a closer look at, for Smith self-diagnoses–not once, but twice!–a peculiar health condition: “laziness”! In one letter (dated 29 November 1743), for example, Smith informs his mother, “I am just recovered of a violent fit of laziness, which has confined me to my elbow-chair these three months.”[3] And in the other relevant letter (dated 2 July 1744), Smith explains to his mother why he has not gotten around to writing her more often: “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…

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