First and foremost he did the best he could for his patients, and made as little as possible of the mysteries and traditional dogmas of the craft. Stories told of him are characteristic: Called to a gentleman who had been subjected to the lowering treatment, and finding him in a pitiful state of hysterical upset, he conceived that this was occasioned partly by his long illness, partly by the previous evacuations, and partly by emptiness. "I therefore ordered him a roast chicken and a pint of canary." A gentleman of fortune he diagnosed with hypochondria was at length told he could do no more for him, but that there was living at Inverness a certain Dr Robertson who had great skill in cases like his; the patient journeyed to Inverness full of hope, and, finding no doctor of the name there, came back to London full of rage, but cured withal of his complaint.