Latest / Selected Essays of Michel de Montaigne / Honour of the Gout-Philander Misaurus

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Honour of the Gout-Philander Misaurus · Selected Essays of Michel de Montaigne

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  Speaker 1: Section zero of the Honor of the Gout. This is
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  Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more intimation or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Read by Alistair The Honor of the Gout by Philander Massurus,
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  Speaker 1: title dedication and advertisement The Honor of the Gout or
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  Speaker 1: a rational discourse demonstrating that the gout is one of
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  Speaker 1: the greatest blessings which can befall mortal man, That all
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  Speaker 1: gentlemen who are weary of it are their own enemies,
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  Speaker 1: that those practitioners who offer at the cure are the
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  Speaker 1: vainest and most mischievous cheats in nature. By way of
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  Speaker 1: a letter to an eminent citizen, wrote in the heat
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  Speaker 1: of a violent paroxysm, and now published for the common good,
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  Speaker 1: by Philander Massurus, London, printed for J. Roberts near the
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  Speaker 1: Oxford Arms in Warwick Lane, seventeen twenty, to all the
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  Speaker 1: numerous offspring of Apollo, whether dogmatical, sons of art or
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  Speaker 1: empirical by blows, to all the pharmaceutic residentiaries in town
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  Speaker 1: or city. Also to all the strolling practitioners and impostors. Gentlemen,
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  Speaker 1: if this letter shall happen in any measure to spoil
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  Speaker 1: your trade. Heaven make me thankful for well I know
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  Speaker 1: that yours is the very trade of two famous princes
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  Speaker 1: that have, by one method or other, read out of
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  Speaker 1: the way very great numbers of men. A malefactor condemned
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  Speaker 1: to die ought to be free from all manner of
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  Speaker 1: insults as he goes to execution. I know it, and
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  Speaker 1: therefore do not dedicate this letter to you by way
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  Speaker 1: of insult, but friendly to mind you that since your
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  Speaker 1: unrighteous trade is broke or breaking, you would timely bethink
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  Speaker 1: yourselves what honest employment you may be fit for. If
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  Speaker 1: you'll take my advice, you shall travel, or to your sorrow.
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  Speaker 1: You have known an overgrown farrier from abroad make a
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  Speaker 1: great doctor here in England. Why should you not make
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  Speaker 1: as good farries abroad as they do doctors here? This
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  Speaker 1: is certain. Like true farriers, you have prescribed to many
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  Speaker 1: a weak man a medicine for a horse, So then
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  Speaker 1: for the material medicut is the same. Nothing will be
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  Speaker 1: troublesome or uneasy to you in your new profession, but
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  Speaker 1: that you shall never get as much by practicing on
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  Speaker 1: a spavin as the gout, But you must be content
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  Speaker 1: with listennings what you can't in conscience expect as much
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  Speaker 1: for killing a horse as a man to this change
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  Speaker 1: of your profession, not on the discovery of frauds than
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  Speaker 1: the dangers thereof. But also the name of your great patron,
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  Speaker 1: Hippocrates invites, what are you more than he come, come
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  Speaker 1: tarry noma es technoen Better may psy change name and profession.
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  Speaker 1: Better a maron among horses than a plague among men.
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  Speaker 1: Having thus obliged you, gentlemen, in an epistle dedicatoriye, by
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  Speaker 1: minding you of the imminent decay of your practice upon
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  Speaker 1: human bodies, and teaching you how to make the best
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  Speaker 1: of a bad market by trying experiments upon horseflesh, I
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  Speaker 1: hope you will make me that grateful return, as to
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  Speaker 1: prevent the obligation I confer on you from turning to
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  Speaker 1: my prejudice. Therefore, if any gouty person that may happen
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  Speaker 1: to malign you, shall object against me and say I
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  Speaker 1: had better have made a forlorn regiment of you and
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  Speaker 1: sent you to have been knocked over the head in Flanders,
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  Speaker 1: than given you a license to kill horses. Remember to
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  Speaker 1: say this for yourselves and for your benefactor, that when
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  Speaker 1: the devils were ejected out of human bodies, they were
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  Speaker 1: suffered to enter into swine upon the first fit of
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  Speaker 1: the gout. Welcome Thou, friendly, earnest of fourscore. Thou that
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  Speaker 1: alone hast got the sovereign power to attend the rich,
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  Speaker 1: unenvied by the poor. Thou that dost a sclepist deride,
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  Speaker 1: and that o'er his gallipots in triumph's stride. Thou that
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  Speaker 1: art used to attend the royal throne and under prop
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  Speaker 1: the head that wears a crone. Thou that doest oft
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  Speaker 1: in privy council wait and guard from dozy sleep the
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  Speaker 1: eyes of state. Thou that doest oft in pamper'd prelate's
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  Speaker 1: toe emphatically urge the pines below. Thou that upon the
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  Speaker 1: bench art feeded high, and warnest the judges how they
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  Speaker 1: tread awry. Thou that art always half the city's grace,
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  Speaker 1: and addest to the solemn model, solemn pace. Thou that
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  Speaker 1: art used to fit on lady's knee, to feed on jellys,
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  Speaker 1: and to drink cold tea. Thou that from velvet slippers
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  Speaker 1: never art free whence is this unsought honor unto me.
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  Speaker 1: Whence can this mighty condescension flow to visit my poor tabernacle?
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  Speaker 1: O thust Jove vouchsafes on IDAs hill to fit at
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  Speaker 1: poor Polyaman's cot, to take a bit. Pleased with his
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  Speaker 1: poor but hospitable feast, Jove bade him ask and granted
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  Speaker 1: his request. So do thou grant for thou art of
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  Speaker 1: race divine begot of Venus by the God of wine,
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  Speaker 1: my humble suit, either to give me store to entertain
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  Speaker 1: thee or never see me more. Advertisement. This piece, as
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  Speaker 1: appears from many passages in it, was wrote towards the
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  Speaker 1: beginning of the reign of King William. The author is
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  Speaker 1: since dead end of section zero, Section one of the
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  Speaker 1: Honor of the Gout by Philandermasurus. This librifox recording is
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  Speaker 1: in the public domain. Read by Alistair letter to an
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  Speaker 1: eminent citizen, the Honor of the Gout, Sir, I owe
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  Speaker 1: you a greater observance, more profound respects, and hearty thanks
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  Speaker 1: for favors to which I had not the merit to
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  Speaker 1: pretend than I am able to express. Should I make
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  Speaker 1: words and phrase my study, but I am not like
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  Speaker 1: to do that. At present, or you have used me
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  Speaker 1: so of late that you tempt me to think you
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  Speaker 1: are going to put as much despite into one scale
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  Speaker 1: as ever you put obligation into the other. Why, sir,
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  Speaker 1: I am informed that your worship, not having a right
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  Speaker 1: sense of things, nor the fear of God before your eyes, should,
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  Speaker 1: to the disgrace of your own virtue, give your tongue
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  Speaker 1: the liberty in an open coffeehouse to speak ill of
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  Speaker 1: the gout. Of the gout, sir, which if you look
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  Speaker 1: on as a disease, you ought welcome as the most
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  Speaker 1: useful and necessary thing that could have happened to you.
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  Speaker 1: But if you consider as becomes you, then with me
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  Speaker 1: you must reverence it as a power divine, on whose
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  Speaker 1: sacred into no did altars eye, spring and fall at
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  Speaker 1: least will sacrifice mor biffic painful loads of matter tatars
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  Speaker 1: with recrements of nervous juice impregnate. Would you, yourself, sir,
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  Speaker 1: patiently endure the honor of our great Master, our rightful
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  Speaker 1: and lawful King, till be contemptuously reflected on by error,
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  Speaker 1: our recurrent piece of conscientious priest craft that infests the town.
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  Speaker 1: Then why should I not be concerned for the honor
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  Speaker 1: of my great master, the Gout, who claims not tis
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  Speaker 1: true the power he exercises over me by any hereditary pretense,
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  Speaker 1: but from an origin altogether a sacred and indisputable viz.
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  Speaker 1: Some voluntary acts and deeds of my own. Yet you
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  Speaker 1: could say that when the Almighty God had, out of
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  Speaker 1: rude chaos, built this goodly frame of nature which we see,
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  Speaker 1: and formed his noble creature man, he indulged the devil
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  Speaker 1: to create some one thing, and his damned envy gave
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  Speaker 1: being to the Gout. Now I am confident, sir, and
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  Speaker 1: have great authorities for it, that if the devil ever
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  Speaker 1: created anything, it was the doctor of whom, since you
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  Speaker 1: have made so much use, I know not, but it
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  Speaker 1: may be rationally inferred that you have dealt with the devil.
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  Speaker 1: The gout, sir, whether you know it or no, was
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  Speaker 1: postonate to the creation and younger something than the fall
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  Speaker 1: of man, who, having incurred the sentence of death, the
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  Speaker 1: friendly gout was sent in mercy down from heaven to
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  Speaker 1: lengthen wasting life. By my consent, you should never have
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  Speaker 1: the gout, who have no more consideration in you than
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  Speaker 1: to blaspheme it I always took your worship for a
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  Speaker 1: person the most accomplished our city has ever bred. I
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  Speaker 1: imagined that you thoroughly understood most things. But it could
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  Speaker 1: never enter into my head that you should fall in
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  Speaker 1: so profane an error as to think into so rash
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  Speaker 1: a practice as to speak ill of the gout. But
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  Speaker 1: because my soul has been full of humble deference to
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  Speaker 1: your worship, I will be at some pains to recover
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  Speaker 1: you to your right mind and a due veneration of
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  Speaker 1: that friendly demon, the gout. For though you may value
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  Speaker 1: yourself and reckon that, no girding satirist can take up
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  Speaker 1: the old proverb against you and say that you are
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  Speaker 1: afraid of your friends when there are none near you. Yet,
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  Speaker 1: what is worse, they may reproach you with this disgraceful truth,
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  Speaker 1: you are afraid of your best friend when he kisses
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  Speaker 1: your very feet. Now, upon this subject, having no need
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  Speaker 1: to use the inveigling arts of oratory, I shall not,
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  Speaker 1: with tropes and metaphorths, with flourishes and amusements of insinuating words,
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  Speaker 1: seek to divert your mind and cheat your judgment, but
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  Speaker 1: to make my work the shorter, and do it effectually
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  Speaker 1: press you with plain demonstration. Your error, sir, was this
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  Speaker 1: that the devil created the gout? I prove he did not.
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  Speaker 1: You know, sir, that the man of sin, the son
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  Speaker 1: of Perdition, best known by the name of Antichrist, is
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  Speaker 1: the pep You must not doubt of this, For till
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  Speaker 1: the days of that excellent prelate Archbishop Loud, the whole
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  Speaker 1: stream of Protestant interpreters gave it. So a learned chaplain
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  Speaker 1: of his has put that character upon the Grand Signor,
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  Speaker 1: and a famous annotator has taught outcha to split Antichrist
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  Speaker 1: into Simon Magus and his gnostic followers. I must confess
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  Speaker 1: I have a sort of a respect to these authorities,
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  Speaker 1: but the body of modern dissenters and the general agreement
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  Speaker 1: of interpreters we Gan Torre in the age of four,
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  Speaker 1: weighs them down. Take in, then, the lame mobility of
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  Speaker 1: the nation, who should know something but are confidant of
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  Speaker 1: nothing more, that Antichrist is the Pope, and your Worship
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  Speaker 1: will agree with me that that's the plain truth of
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  Speaker 1: the matter. By the way, I will observe one thing
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  Speaker 1: which will not trouble my demonstration, but will let your worship.
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  Speaker 1: See how ready I am to allow you in your
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  Speaker 1: speculation all that can be reasonably desired. A celebrated author
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  Speaker 1: notes that the Ancients described Antichrist by the phrase of
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  Speaker 1: prototicos tey satane, the firstborn of the devil. Supposing now
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  Speaker 1: that the devil created something, as you contend, you see,
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  Speaker 1: it could not be the gout at least, not if
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  Speaker 1: you'll be judged by the thus, but rather Antichrist or
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  Speaker 1: the Pope. I desire your worship to consider next that
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  Speaker 1: you shall not read in Platina or Nufrius or any
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  Speaker 1: later anti Christian biographer, that ever fettered toe of the
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  Speaker 1: pope was visited with beneficial gout, But had so great
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  Speaker 1: a blessing been created by the devil, as you fondly imagine,
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  Speaker 1: the devil had for certain bestowed it on his first born,
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  Speaker 1: the Pope. Nay, and then too, instead of the filthy
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  Speaker 1: scrutiny through the porphry chair for old and wasted testicles,
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  Speaker 1: the deacon had only pulled off the stocking of the
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  Speaker 1: elect and the ratificatory report had been dorminus norstach papa
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  Speaker 1: babat podogram. In short, Sir, Antichrist nor the Pope, for
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  Speaker 1: they are one and the same, first born of the devil,
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  Speaker 1: according to the ancients, being never favored with the gout,
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  Speaker 1: it is plain that the devil did not create it
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  Speaker 1: a per day d'exay, which was the thing to be demonstrated.
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  Speaker 1: Having thus, sir, utterly confounded your error, my next labor
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  Speaker 1: shall be to instruct you in a sounder persuasion. The
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  Speaker 1: gout was sent in mercy down from heaven to length
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  Speaker 1: and wasting life. End of Section one, Section two of
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  Speaker 1: the Honor of the Gap by Phelana Masurus. This LibriVox
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  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Read by Alistair letter
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  Speaker 1: to an eminent citizen, Part two. The seat of this
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  Speaker 1: friendly demon, by whom every afflicted man receives a thousand
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  Speaker 1: times more benefit than ever Socrates. By his his seat,
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  Speaker 1: I say, is in the nervous parts. He commonly visits
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  Speaker 1: the internodia of the bones of feet, sometimes the hip,
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  Speaker 1: the knee, elbow, shoulder, wrist, and ankle. But to prove
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  Speaker 1: its divine original I should proceed methodically from his lowest commendations,
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  Speaker 1: ascend by six just steps or degrees, until I have
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  Speaker 1: raised him above the stars and ended him among the
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  Speaker 1: celestial spirits to whom, sir, you will then be tempted
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  Speaker 1: to offer your horaisins in the prescribed form at the
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  Speaker 1: end of the old manuscript missile communicated to me by
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  Speaker 1: a learned antiquary, a great collector of those rarities, the
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  Speaker 1: form this blessed Gout, most desirable Gout, sovereign antidote of
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  Speaker 1: murdering maladies, powerful corrector of intemperance, deigned to visit me
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  Speaker 1: with thy purging fires, and throw off the tophous injury
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  Speaker 1: which I may have suffer'd by wine and wit too
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  Speaker 1: hard for the virtue of a devotee upon a holy festival.
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  Speaker 1: But fail not, thy humble supplicant, who need thy friendly
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  Speaker 1: help to keep his tottering tenement in order, fail him
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  Speaker 1: not every vernal and autumnal equinox. I know some precise
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  Speaker 1: doctors are against all invocation of saints. At present. I
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  Speaker 1: shall not dispute with them, but they must grant me
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  Speaker 1: that there's more to be said in justification of such
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  Speaker 1: a prayer to the Gout than can be said for
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  Speaker 1: the officers directed to any other saints not accepting the Virgin.
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  Speaker 1: For I defy their worshipers to prove that there has
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  Speaker 1: been the tithe of so much good done by them,
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  Speaker 1: all as I shall prove has been done by the
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  Speaker 1: beneficial gout. I begin at the lowest step, and note
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  Speaker 1: first the gout gives a man pain without danger. It
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  Speaker 1: is possible, I confess that a sick man, if he
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  Speaker 1: were directly asked to declare his sense of the matter,
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  Speaker 1: might refuse to acknowledge the benefit of pain without danger,
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  Speaker 1: for sickness and peevishness commonly go together. But mind his
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  Speaker 1: discourse at another time, when he talks from the heart
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  Speaker 1: and is not upon his guard. Then, oh, then the
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  Speaker 1: pain without danger is a blessed thing. For instance, underline
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  Speaker 1: suffering under a painful, threatening distemper. What's his first question
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  Speaker 1: to the physician? But this doctor, pray, be plain with
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  Speaker 1: me and let me truly know what I am to expect.
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  Speaker 1: Don't flatter a sick man, but tell me, am, I
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  Speaker 1: like to recover or know that pain you see which
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  Speaker 1: he suffers does not at all trouble him. He's only
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  Speaker 1: afraid that he shall die. Secure him against that danger,
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  Speaker 1: and all is well with him. Can't slash burn. No
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  Speaker 1: pain is grievous if it promised to set us out
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  Speaker 1: of the danger of death. When the other doctor comes,
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  Speaker 1: the physician of the soul, I mean, whose coming bodes
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  Speaker 1: no good to the body. He tells the decumbent a
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  Speaker 1: long story of the pains and misery of life, in
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  Speaker 1: order to make his noctumitus go down the easier. But
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  Speaker 1: that method seldom takes, for not one of a hundred
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  Speaker 1: is so bad. But he is content to live and
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  Speaker 1: put the rest to the venture. The fear of death
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  Speaker 1: is generally more grievous than all the cruel pains of
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  Speaker 1: a wretched life. But since we must have pain while
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  Speaker 1: we live, give me the pain of the gout, which
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  Speaker 1: has no danger attending. Here some malevolent adversary may importunately object.
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  Speaker 1: Did never a man die of the gout? To this
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  Speaker 1: I answer one, I have not yet affirmed that the
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  Speaker 1: gout can make a man immortal, though I will boldly
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  Speaker 1: say thus much. It very often keeps a man alive
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  Speaker 1: till all his friends are weary of him. But two,
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  Speaker 1: should I venture to say that the gout has in
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  Speaker 1: itself the power to make a man immortal, It ought
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  Speaker 1: not seem so stray, all things being considered. If that
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  Speaker 1: be true, which some authors write of noble Paracelsus, he
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  Speaker 1: had the secret to make a man immortal. And I
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  Speaker 1: would not say he lied, though himself died about forty
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: for perhaps he did not like his company. But it
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  Speaker 1: must be by the way of his discovery to give
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  Speaker 1: any man the gout when he pleased. In that. I
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  Speaker 1: am positive here the objector will scornfully put me in
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  Speaker 1: mind that gouty persons escape death no more than other men,
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  Speaker 1: which is very true. But that's because men are fools
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  Speaker 1: and don't know when they're safe. They must be curing
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  Speaker 1: the gout forsooth, and to that end they deal with
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  Speaker 1: the doctor, i e. With the factor of death, the
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  Speaker 1: emissary of hell, the purveyor of the grave, the damned
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  Speaker 1: alchemist good at calcigning nothing but living bodies into dust
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  Speaker 1: and ashes. Let every one bear his own burthen the
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: gout has nothing to do with the carnage of the doctor.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: All that can be rationally said against the gout is
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  Speaker 1: that it does not actually preserve men, in spite of
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  Speaker 1: their own folly and the doctor's ignorance. And yet there
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  Speaker 1: is the right honorable Sir r H. The gout is
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  Speaker 1: so salutary to him that two Swiss doctors can't despatch him.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: What a certain lord would give that those two coagulating
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: spirits could remove his honor's gout. But I say, gout,
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  Speaker 1: hold thy own, for earth has more need of the
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: cripple than heaven of the saint. And now, sir, let
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  Speaker 1: me tell you a story. The famous Willis shall be
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: my voucher, who dissected the body of the reverend learned
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: and pious doctor Hammond, killed purely by his friend, who
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: unhappily taught him a medicine to cure the gout. Upon
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  Speaker 1: the success of that medicine, the doctor's old nephretic pains returned,
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  Speaker 1: and in a fortnight despatched him. Therefore, for your own,
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  Speaker 1: for your lady's, and for your children's sake, Sir, welcome
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  Speaker 1: the gout to your house, and shut all your doors
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  Speaker 1: against the physicians. I'll warrant you for upwards a hundred Lord,
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  Speaker 1: how glad shall I be to see and pick chalk
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  Speaker 1: stones out of your worship's feet some forty or fifty years. Hence,
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  Speaker 1: by that time you'll have learned so much patience as
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  Speaker 1: never to roar for the matter. But if you do
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  Speaker 1: roar for that may be then, as you use yourself Now,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: they that look on, if they love life, will envy
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  Speaker 1: not pity you. Indeed, you are already a fit object
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  Speaker 1: for the envy of thinking men, For I have heard
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: you confess that yours is an hereditary gout, and that's
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  Speaker 1: for the better. An hereditary gout is a far greater
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  Speaker 1: happiness than an acquired one. For what a deal of
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  Speaker 1: intemperance and amorous successes might it have cost your worship
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  Speaker 1: to have got the gout before forty whereas now you
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  Speaker 1: have the mighty blessing for nothing sortayn ascendi. It is
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  Speaker 1: your birthright, sir, never think of parting with it. Perhaps
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  Speaker 1: you may now be tempted to ask me how I
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  Speaker 1: acquired my gout. I shall not be shy to satisfy
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: your curiosity, for I come by it Honestly. We scholars
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: have a way by ourselves to come at the blessing
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: without ever being beholden to the God that cheers the
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: genteel candidate of the gout by day, or the goddess
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: that entertains him on nights. We lead sedentary lives, feed heartily,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: drink quantum suficit, but sleep immoderately so that the superfluities
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: of our sober and gravefulness not exhaling, We very honestly
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: prepare tartarus matter for the gout, for the beneficial gout,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: which gives us pain without danger. Ascend me now the
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: next step which advances the honor of the gout. End
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: of section two. Section three of the Honor of the
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Gout by Fulanimasurus. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Read by Alistair Letter to an eminent citizen, Part three. Second.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: A gout is no constant companion, but allows his patience loocid,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: joyous intervals. Human nature is so framed that no one
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: thing is agreeable to it always. Therefore it is well
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: for us that the world is so full of changes.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: The earth, we tread on, the seas, we sail on
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: the air, we breathe in the starry firmament expanded round us,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: have their continual vicissitudes, which all make for our advantage
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: and delight. The body of man is a true microcosm
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: in this respect, for it never continues in one condition.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: And upon the same account, his mind is a very
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: fit guest for his body, for at different times he
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: thinks and speaks different things. Modo, raggers at quair, tetrarchus, omnia,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: magna loquenz, murdo sit mahi. Sometimes he talk of heroes
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: and of kings in mighty swelling numbers, mighty things. And
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: then again, let gracious fortune give a little meat and
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: drink enough to live, Let her a coat to keep
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: out cold. Present, though tis thickened, course, he'll be content.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Mister Creech, how welcome is a guest that knows when
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: to be gone. But if his stay be longer than ordinary,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: we are ready to thrust him out of doors. For
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: these and the like considerations. The way of the Gout's
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: dealing with his patients can never be enough esteemed. Whatever
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: some impatient weak minds may think, tis manifest that the Gout,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: by his coming and going, takes the right course to
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: be very agreeable and obliging. Weak people may curse the
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Gout and wish to be wholly excused from his intermitting visits.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: But I look upon such people as men who are
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: weary of the world and being willing to leave it.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: I grant that they have reason to will be angry
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: with the Gout, with the Gout that folds their mortality
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: so fast about them. Your worship has been guilty of impatience.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: But I hope to recover you to a better mind.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: I have already shown you that to a wise considerer,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: the absence of danger takes off from the pain of
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: the gout. But some pain there is and ought to be,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: for constant health has no relish. Tis an insipidull thing
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: that Reverend Calvinist Dr. Twist affirms that tis better to
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: be damned than annihilated. I might, I suppose, with less offense,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: affirm that tware better to be dead than never to
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: be sick of the gout. Nay this, I am sure
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: of that all the sober and experienced people will be
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: so far from taking offense that I shall have them
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: all on my side if I venture on that paradox.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: For how often have I heard a grave adviser, one
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: that had tried health and sickness alternately for many years,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: tell the robust, young, riotous fellow that he knew not
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: the value of health. No how should he having never
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: been sick? But why should his sober adviser press him
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: to be careful of his health? That's the way never
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: to understand the deliciousness of it. By the time he
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: gets the gout, he'll thoroughly understand the matter. I'll warrant him.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Set me two men together, one that never knew pain
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: and another newly recovered of the gout. Observed them both narrowly.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: In the former, perhaps you may perceive an easy, even temper,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: but the latter is ravished with joys and satisfactions, which,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: if his tongue does not declare his hands and feet
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: and gesture shall. Homer says that the beauty of hern
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: was a prize. With all the blood spilt through the
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: long course of a ten years war, Homer would not
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: have redeemed those lives by the least injury to that
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: adorable lady. Such are the lucid intervals between the heart
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: breaking fits of the gout, worth all the ravings and
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: roarings which the violent paroxysms force from the tortured patient.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: All those who would spoil the refined pleasure of his
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: recovery by wishing to have one angry throb one heavy
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: grown bathed him see Paves comperee magnalitererette. If we might
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: compare great things with small the gout is to health
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: as ham and tongue to wine, or rather as zuizpseki
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: to the lover's congress courage, sir, and be advised by me.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Tis good advice I am giving, and you shall have it.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: Grat us. When your foot swells and burns and throbs,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: banish all foolish sorrow and repining instead, whereof let the
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: swelling joys dilate your generous breast. When sharp fermenting juices
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: not easily miscible, shall meet and by their furious contest,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: cause cruel twitchings of your nervous fibers. Comfort your heart
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: and be extremely pleased when masculine assorus recrements shall with
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: female tartarus matter mix, engender and beget a tophous mass.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: When the same topus mass shall lodge in the internolia
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: of your Worship's bones, entertaining you with a rending solution
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: of continuity. Then let your soul triumph, but touch, not taste,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: not the crew in emulsion, doctor's emotions julips and a pasames,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Nor let his repercussives, resolvents, catapalms and anodyne's touch you.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: So let your friend the gout take his course and
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: maul you soundly, Oh so easy, so please, so joyous,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: so happy, so blessed will you be when the turn
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: of health shall come. Why, sir, you'll be in heaven.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: In heaven, while you are on earth, you'll be entirely
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: beatified on this side of the grave. And that's more
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: than Solomon has arrived at yet. If you can give
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: any credit to a Catholic painter, for but one half
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: of him is glorified, the other half friesen flames, vexed
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: by tormenting devils like the noble Shaftesbury in Windsor Hall,
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: be shrew the painter for his pains. Fast est et
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: aposte dosri learn of our common enemy. Sir, I fancy
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: the late tyrant solaces his exile with the expectation of
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: a return to trample on the liberties and riot in
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: the blood of heretics. But before ever that dismal day come,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: may the gout my life's kind preserver, and my dear
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: life itself forsake me. Only I will make it in
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: my bargain. I will not stand to this wish. If
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: my help can contribute anything to oppose his invasion. I
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: am much of the mind, sir, that by what I
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: have said already, you are already becoming a proselyte. But
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: before I have done with you, you shall choose to
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: part with your eyes rather than your true friend, the
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Gout the mighty blessing, whereof that you may the better understand,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: mount with me one step higher, and then take notice
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: of this further advantage of the Gout. End of section
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: three Section four of The Honor of the Gout by Philanimosurus.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Alistair letter to an eminent citizen, Part four third, the
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Gout presents you with a perpetual almanac, and that it
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: may never be out of the way, but ready always
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: for your worship's use. Safely deposits it in the internodia
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: of your bones, barometers, thermometers, and other inventions of men
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: not yet perfect masters of their art. So more for
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: the delight than the use of the curious, but the
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: useful pains of the Gout give your honor, trusty prognostics
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: of the seasons. As often as a moist constitution of
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: the year, south or north, winds or snows are at hand,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: you predict those things from the assessors of your pains,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: And by the absence of your pains, you foreknow the contrary.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: So one way or the other, your bone almanac serves
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: for all changes. Our lilies and Gabrie's foreknow when it
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: shall be rainlike or snow like. But when your honor
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: forenos by means of a gout, does afterwards actually come
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: to pass. Doctor Goade, knew more of the stars and
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: their positions than you, but not half so much of
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: their influence. Spinoza will have it that when a Jewish
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: prophet foretold anything, he gave a sign, a present sign,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: which was a confirmation of his prophecy. You have a
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: sign within usir and our true prophet all over Majora
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: and amelia dieitus viseribus peranum Continentu says cliny. Nature gives
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: larger sized animals a longer stay in the womb of
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: their mother. They are mighty limbs and vast frame of bond.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Are not so soon fashioned and perfected, as is the
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: compendious texture of lesser animals. So is it with the
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: most noble arts and sciences, with the most useful inventions,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: When first brought to light, every man is taken up
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: with unactive ecstasy and lazy admiration, greatly pleased to be
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: taught and let into the mystery, and as well, content
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: to know no more than is taught him. Time passes
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: silently on, and the ages steal away, before there starts
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: up a studious, inquisitive person who bends his wit to
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: improve the discoveries of his ancestors and raise them to
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: their just perfection. Now of this observation, I am of
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: the mind. There is not again in nature so clean
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: an instant as the gout affords us. The gout at
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: first passed for no other but an evil spirit, which
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: an exercising priest attacked with charms, before ever the physician
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: fell foul upon him with poisonous recipes. The physician purely
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: to force a trade imposed upon the people that the
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: gout was a disease. Having cheated them with his false opinion,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: he plagued them with real tortures, all of which he
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: was pleased to christen by the general name of the
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: therapeutic method in which his barbarous executions thus follow one another.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: First phlebotomy, then cathartics, emetics, hypnotics, the underline and all.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: And while the inside of the poor patient is thus
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: miserably react and confounded, he daubs the outside with anodyne applications,
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: unguents and cataplasms. And when all is done, I'll give
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: them my body to practice on, though I had rather
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: the executioner had it to dispatch outright. If plain cathartic
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: gruel and not the cataplasm of a fresh cowterrd do
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: not work, greater wonders than anything they can pretend to.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: From Germany, nay, from beyond the Alps, they come with
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: hard names, exotic cant and baneful poison, to allay the
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: paroxysm and remove the pro catarxis of the gout. But
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: God be thanked, their practice decays, and must do more
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: and more every day, now that it is so plainly
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: discovered that the gout needs no remedy, not being, in
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: truth and proper speaking, a disease, but a sovereign antidote
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: against the most dangerous diseases. And therefore the people of
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: the best sense are content to let it take its course.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: And not only so, but they are proud to publish
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: the satisfaction that they take in one or other advantage
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: which the gout affords them. For instance, as to the
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: foreknowledge of the weather, the gout never twitches their nerves,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: but they will be telling others what changes are near
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: at hand. Now that which I propose is this, that
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: people should not think it enough to know thus much
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: of the gout, but study to improve and increase their knowledge.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: For no doubt more may be made of this blessing
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: than ever yet was done by the happy man that
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: has enjoyed it the longest. I am persuaded that if
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: the fortunate patient would be at pain to observe all
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: the motions of the gout in his pinching, smarting, galling assessors,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: in his gnashing, stabbing, burning paroxysms, in his evacuating, tender,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: remitting recesses, he might quickly come to wind a storm
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: so long before that in a short time, no owners
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: would think their ships safe but with a gouty master,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: Nor would any experienced seamen that wanted a ship offer
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: himself to the merchants. But upon crouches. Possibly some nice
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: person may object, that is a sad thing to be
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: a cripple. I reply, in lameness, two things are to
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: be considered, the unsightly gait and the afflicting pain. As
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: to the unsightly gate, set the Italian proverb against it,
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: he knows not Venus, in her perfect sweetness, who has
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: never lain with a lame mistress, And Montaigna tells us
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: that the same instead of men as well as women,
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: For the Queen of the Amazons and the personable Scythian
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: who courted her to love Aosa Corlos wypey, lame men
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: make the best gallants in that female republic. To prevent
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: the dominion of the males, they lamed them arms and
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: legs in their infancy, believing that they would be rather
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: the better for the use which they should make of them. Thereafter,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: there Montaigni gives a philosophical reason for the advantage cruing
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: by lameness either to men or women, viz. The legs
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: and thighs are not receiving their due element. It falls
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: out that the gentle parts above are the fuller, better supplied,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: and more vigorous. Two. As to the pain proceeding from lameness,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: I will not to diminish that tell the objector a
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: long story from the reasonings of Aristotle or the practice
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: of Cato, but only pray him to consider the lower
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: sort of people who know little of example and mind
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: as little of precept. Nature is their guide, and this
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: is their familiar practice. They call a tizick, says Montaigna,
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: a cough, the bloody flux, no more than a looseness,
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: a pleuracy, but a stitch in the side. And as
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: they softly name, so, they patiently endure these grievances. If
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: the mercenary adversaries of the gout, the doctors have any
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: other objections against a bone almanac besides what I have answered,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: let them be published. I will fairly and fully answer
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: them also, or announce my reverence for the gout. Oh
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: that I had an infallible medicine which would both certainly
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: and speedily cause the gout. Wine and women are tedious
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: and uncertain ways of purchasing the mighty blessing, I would
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: not doubt but to make more of it than ever
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: Daffy did, if his elixir, or any strolling mountebank of
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: his nostrum, the fair for Riders Almanac, Partridges almanac Underlines.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: Almanac lasts but one month in the year, But I
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: might have end gout almanacs and bone almanacs all the
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: year round. Here I suspect that the malevolent doctors that
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: get their living by their mischievous craft in practicing on
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: the gout will object that all which I have hitherto
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: urged in its commendation has a very great delay. For
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: though it is not dangerous, yet it is painful. Though
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: the patient has lucid intervals, Yet he has violent paroxysms.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: Though he be a prophet, yet the spirit which inspires
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: rends him. But of these objectors I would fain know
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: whether wholly precious enthusiasm be not a furious, ungovernable impulse,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: whether lucid intervals are not more eligible than a constant,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: weak and sullen light. Where the pain without danger is
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: not better than ease without security. I am of the
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: opinion that our compositions are no more able to endure
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: pure and unmixed felicities than Semle, the half gone mother
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: of Bacchus. To abide the warm congress of the Olympic
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: Jove circled with all his glories, yet to silence envy itself.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: The next step we ascend, we shall see the gout
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: dealing to his patience. I benefit so wondrous, refined, pleasant,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: and useful, that he must be a very dull creature
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: that can seriously think on this and not passionately wish
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: deliberately considerate, and not heartily labor by all honest ways
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: and means to deserve the gout. End of section four
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: Section five of the Honor of the Gout by Philander Massurus.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Allister letter to an eminent citizen, Part five four. Gouty
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: persons are most free from the headache, the reason of
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: which is this, the heavy recrements of blood and nervous
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: juice always fall downward to the gouty joints, the nerves
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: of the head, the fibers, and the membranes, whereof there
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: are many placed above and under the skull. The two mendinges,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: the tanacles of the nerves, the pericranium and other periostia,
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: the muscles, the paniculus carnosus, and lastly the skin itself
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: are all freed from a world of torment by means
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: of the medicinal gout, which attracts to exterior remote parts
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: vicious humors of various denominations, and there sets them on fire,
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: wastes and evacuates them. Persons much favored by the gout,
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: upon every long absence of that best friend of theirs,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: whether occasioned by unknown accidents or unwise recourse to the
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: mischievous tampering of a wicked doctor, exchange their freedom from
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: the gout for a pain more intense and dangerous. But
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: of all other pains they are extremely subject to the headache.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: Somethink of a cloud more or less always hangs over
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: their brain. But as soon as ever the grout pleases
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: for giving them their ingratitude to revisit them Presently the
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: weather breaks up, the nerves are relaxed, the fibers unmolested,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: and the membranes and muscles recover their right tone, while
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: the inimicous contesting particles, thrown off by the boiling blood
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: and turgon nervous juice, fall down to the remote parts
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: of the body. And then the understanding grows clear, the
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: thoughts brisk and active, and the patient is fitted, whatever
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: his station and employment is in the world, to do
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: the duty thereof better than ever. I have been told
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: of several sea captains, and I have reason to believe
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: the relator, who, during a fit of the gout, happening
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: to meet the enemy, bestirred themselves with a vigor that
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: forgot their pain and gave their orders, with a steadier
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: presence of mind than they were ever masters of before.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: I have the honor to be known as a person
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: of quality, who has obliged the age with several instructive pieces,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: who never published a sorry trifle, nor ever anything so
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: absolutely perfect, useful and entertaining as when he lay under
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: a course of the gout. Then would he dictate like
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: an angel, or, which is much the same, like a
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: man inspired to his ravished Amanuensis. That emmanuensis of his
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: has told me, though he loved his master very well,
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: yet he was always sorry for his recovery, for then
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: his strength failed him, and he was no more than
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: another writer, I mean a writer of the first rank.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: Though I know nothing that a man, when he enjoys
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: the gout, is unfit for but jumping, running of races,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: or football. The amazons, if they are not blied coveted
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: to admit strangers, flagrante paroxismo. Had Montaigna ever met with
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: the ms, whence I have the notice, he would have
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: given us a philosophical reason for it, the gout being
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: thus beneficial, I bless myself to think that any patient
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: should be so much his own enemy as to be
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: weary of it. Any doctor so much an enemy of
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: mankind as to offer at the cure but curate They can't,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: whatever they pretend, unless they killed the patient. For my part,
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: I know of no difference in the earth between a
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: doctor of physic and a tinker, save that the doctor
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: has more of the tinker, and the tinker more of
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: the doctor in him. For the tinker eventually stops that
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: particular hole which he is hired to stop, though he
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: makes two other for it. But the doctor does but
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: disturb the gout, which he undertakes to cure. And when
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: the vicious humors of the body are not suffered to
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: have their course to the exterior remote parts there to
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: be sacrificed on the internodial altars of the gout, they
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: revert with fury and indignation, dangerously assault The victuals, diffuse
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: their venom all over the visera, corrupt the stomach, but
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: more especially affect the head with violent pains, which are
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: often followed by dangerous swoonings, a vertigo, a failing of
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: memory nay, and sometimes a downright delirium. Thus physicians cure
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: their patients of the gout, then doubly blessed are the
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: poor and needy, who, when they have the gout and
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: do not understand their own happiness, cannot be at the
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: charge to get rid on it by a cure of
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: the doctors. Nay, beside the mischievous consequences of their meddling,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: their very meddling itself is a sore of pain than
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: the gout a thousand times, so that that man's intellectuals
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: must not be right. Who would not wish to have
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: his headache cured by the gout rather than by the
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: doctor's methods, i e. By being purged and blooded, cupped
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: and fluxed, stifled with spirit of heartshorn and soot, drenched
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: with cephalic julips, and waters cold as those that extinguished
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: the vital heat of that renowned, thriceilustrious hero Hight told
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: Simon the King, the gout's are specific a single, proper
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: and effectual remedy for the headache. By a strong revulsion,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: it attracts morbific matter from the nobler parts. And ever
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: while you live, say aye, keep pain from your head
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: and sorrow from your heart. The honest old Bell Dam
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: made sport for her neighbors when she applied the clister
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: to her forehead, the part affected again when her neighbors
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: turned up her blind side and played the pipe at
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: her virgin avenue. That was just to her marry gap
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: quoth she tis the upper end that eggs, and you
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: give the physic to the lower. But the clister was
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: a good remedy for the headache, though planted at distance,
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: And so the gout, how necessary a friend to the head.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: The medicinal gout is keeping it easy, clean and free
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: from all morbific matter which disturbs the brain. We might
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: partly guess from the subtle observation of the famous Confucius
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: upon gouty persons, which is communicated to us by one
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: of the chasest historians among the veracious emissaries. For the
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: Chinese are blessed with the gout as well as the Europeans.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: It is possible, said the wife of the Mandarin, for
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: a lame gouty person to be a knave. Even in
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: our own country. Have I known some such? But whoever
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: knew a gouty cripple? That was a fool in our
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: book of that great master of morals and politics, presented
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: by a Mandarin of Confucius's own race, to learn a
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: jesuit who has enriched the King of France's library with it.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: But I suppose that the book was there reposited since
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: a certain person finished his travels. These further remarks are delivered.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: Natural fools never acquire the gaut. The sons of gouty
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: persons are defended from dullness an folly by the sins
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: of their parents. Or if in their minority their understandings
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: happened to lie a little back, they shall no sooner
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: enter their gouty inheritance. But a bright illumination brings the
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: same forward. Whatever a man's natural powers are, they are
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: so improved by the gout, so refined, so heightened in
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: the paroxysm, that I am almost tempted to call it
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: a sort of natural inspiration facile as to inventus adeer,
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: what the noble Confucius has admirably well observed of the
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: gout viz. That it is a perfect delatory of folly,
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: prompts me to think that it would be worth inquiry
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: whether the gout is not as effectual against madness. And
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: we may reasonably believe that it is so, if upon
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: examination it should be found there are no gouty people
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: in bedlam, and then for the recovery of those poor
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: creatures to their wits again. It will not need much
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: consideration whether they ought to be excused the hard blows
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: which their barbarous keepers deal them, and the therapeutic method
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: of purging, bleeding, cupping, fluxing, vomiting, clistering, julips, apismes, powders, confections, epithemes,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: and cataplasms, which the more barbarous doctors torment them. And
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: instead of all their learned tortures, indulged for a time
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: only a little in temperance as to the wine or
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: within orso, or the scholar's delight of feeding worthily and
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: sleeping heartily, whereby they might get the gout and their
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: madness were cured. Many and great are the advantages which
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: accrue to mortal man from the gout, as cannot but
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: sufficiently appear to your worship, from what I have, in
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: running haste observed. But far more numerous and unconceivably fast
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: are the improvements which a man worthy of the gout
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: and sensible of his happiness, might, with attentive care and
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: sedulous observance, make. Yet I shall not insist on conjectural topics,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: to do justice to so effectual a promoter of the
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: safety of human life. But proceed on those benefits which
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: are the objects of sense, so that if there shall
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: be any person that shall think or speak ill of
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: the gout, he must be one that does not desire
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: or deserve to live. It is a lofty height to
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: which I have advanced your worship. Four steeper cents you
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: have already climbed. But the honor of the gout caput
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: into a nobila conditt can your head bear to mount
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: a fifth? But why do I ask that question? The
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: gout itself will enable you. End of section five, Section
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: six of the Honor of the Gout by Philanimosurus. This
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Alistair
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: letter to an eminent citizen. Part six five. The gout
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: preserves its patients from the great danger of fevers. Gouty persons,
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: by reason of a fixed discracy of the blood, are
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: not obnoxious to fevers, as they live free from the
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: dreadful pains of the headache, so likewise from the scorching
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: heat of fevers. Everyone knows that a fever is a high,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: disorderly motion or overboiling of the blood, which seldom or
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: never happens to gouty persons, because the malignant recremments of
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: the blood and nervous juice which occasion fevers are continually
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: deposited in the joints of gouty persons are there imprisoned
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: water and consumed by the purging, healing, cleaning, sanitive fire
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: of the burning gout. There is a natural motion and
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: heat in the blood, depending partly on its proper classis
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: and constitution for being composed of spirit, salt, and sulfur
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: principles vigorous and active, it spontaneously grows turgid and tumultuous,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: like generous wine in a narrow vessel, pent and partly
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: to the ferment implanted in the heart, which rarefies the
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: liquor passing through its channels and forces to rise with
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: evervescence frothy. The preter natural ebullition of the blood is
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: caused either by some extraneous heterogeneous mixture or from the
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: immoderate exaltation of its own natural spirit or sulfur, which,
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: when it happens presently, a high and quick pulse follows
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: the blood like a sulfurous liquor, taking fire diffuses its
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: burning heat all over the body, the vast sicilian chasms
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: which vomit flaming heaps of matter, sulfurous and combustible. What
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: are they but nature's emblems of a burning, fiery fever.
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: And when the poets fable that haughty Typheus, big erics
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: and bold Enceladus deburied in the earth by angry Jupiter,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: belch out those fires which waste the country and frighten
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: the inhabitants, what mean they to denote but the restlessness
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: of strenuous heroes, for want of the gout to withdraw
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: the feverish fuel frying in flames, merciless and destructive, methinks,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: I pity the young and healthy, whose blood flows temperately
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: and never new disorder. I pity them, I say, not
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: for their present ease, but because of their imminent danger.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: For when the royal son of France blazes and perishes,
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: and claims painted by brave Russel's masterly hand, when the
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: vanquished adds Roll shifts off in boating glorious a king
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: of equal valor from a safe station, all the while
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: beholding the Missieur's prudent care to preserve a great commander
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: when a haughty marechal is beat out of the strongest
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: bulwark that fenced his master's treacherous rapine, and to induce
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: that master of his for once to keep the cartel, can,
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: in spite of all his blustering, part with his sword
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: when rebel invaders are disappointed. An execrable assassin's punished at
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: such tempting occasions as these, who can forbear a rightful,
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: lawful and brimful glass. Yet on so solemn a festival,
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: if the healthy gives nature but a philip, it may
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: perchance to throw him into a fever, and that fever
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: perchance to cost him his life. Whereas the man that's
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: obnoxious to the gout cheerfully venceres the duty of the day,
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: well knowing that when the worst comes to the worst,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: 'tis but a roaring purgatory some forty days or so.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: And by that time the gout has wasted and cleansed
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: off the tartaroush recraments of undigested to learn. Who knows,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: but good news may come to make another holy day purgatory,
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: which cleanses the cells as the departed from their filth,
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: which sets them out of the danger of the lake,
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: and renders them like burnt tobacco pipes, clean and pure
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: and fit for paradise. Is a true picture of the
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: fire of the gout, which spends the morbific matter that
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: might otherwise throw the body into a hellish fever. Indeed,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: infidels and heretics may object and say that perhaps purgatory
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: is but a false story, But no matter for that.
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: For grave authors teach that a false story may be
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: a true picture and serve to illustrate as necessary a
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: doctrine as that of purgatory. But in this I am
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: positive that neither a false story nor a true one
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: can illustrate a more infallible maxim than this, that the
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: purging fires of the gout withdraw the fuel from the
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: destructive fires of burning fevers. Those learned and worthy authors
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: that rite of devils and spirits, and know the natures
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: and orders of them as perfectly as the heart can wish,
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: tell us that there be two sorts of them, white
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: and black, good and bad. So is it certainly with diseases.
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: The gout, if it be lawful to call it a disease,
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: is a good and useful disease. A white devil, the fever,
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: a bad and hurtful disease, a black devil, the devil
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: of a disease or a disease, that is, the devil whom,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: if ever the physician casts out, I'll swear it is
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: by compact, whereas the gout is an honest febrifuge. The
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: operations thereof natural and intelligible, something painful, indeed, but there's
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: no magic in them. By the way, if the physician
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: cures or casts out black diseases or devils by compact
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: with black devils may not be said to be a
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: double wickedness, For I took it to be a Roman
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: priests and godly office with rumbling exorcisms to eject them.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: But this is the felt also of other dealers. There's
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: nothing more common among them than to encroach upon one
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: another's trade. Could tyrants inflict fevers, they would never make
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: use of the rack or gibbet axe or unrighteous judge
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: unless the object of their fate were an honest, gouty fellow,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: for the gout would soften the feverish infliction. As the
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: Popish printer did his father confess his penance when he
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: boiled the peas which he was required to put in
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: his shoes before he took his walk. There is not
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: certainly a severer torment than a burning fever, nor a
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: more sovereign antidote than the medicinal gout. So that is
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: a truth clear as the sun. If more people had
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: the gout, fewer would die of a fever. Having placed
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: these things in so clear a light, I am strongly
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: persuaded that not your worship only, but the generality of
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: the age, will set their prejudices aside and yield to
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: the happy force of the many useful truths which, by
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: the bright illumination of a violent gout paroxysm, I have
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: here discovered, so that hereafter, instead of the old parting
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: compliments Chai you, sair, God keep you in good health,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: I question not, but we shall say the gout offend you, sir.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: God give you the gout, For we ought not to
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: hope for a blessing without the means. To wish a
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: man the gout is to wish him that which withdraws
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: fuel from diseases and preserves life at so cheap a
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: rate it costs a man not a penny more than patience.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: It has been the opinion of some writers that none
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: can be saved who die of the plague. But in
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: judging the future state of others, I think it best
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: to venture being mistaken on the charitable side. And therefore
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: I would sooner believe that none can be damned who
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: have the gout. And I must tell your Worship that
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: I have known a less probable sign of salvation given
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: by a dissenting Rabbi to his hearers, When Mercury, by
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: the mighty power of a Verse, borrowed from that great
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: architect Homer, heaved up the aspiring mountain Pellyon had piled
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: it entire on heaven, shouldering Osa, and then helped Charon
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: up to the top the poor old felium, and complained
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: that the distance from the earth was so great that
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: he could not see what was done there. I am
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: much afraid, sir, that this uppermost step of ascent on
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: which I am going to seat your Worship, that you
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: may have a full view of the amazing excellence of
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: the medicinal useful health, restoring soul enlivening gout, will place
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: you at such a vast distance above the turen things
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: and notions that he will not be able to discern
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: the true proportion of that benefit which crowned the honor
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: of the gout, at least not so plainly as I
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: could wish. End of section six, Section seven of the
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: Honor of the Gout Animasrus. This LibriVox recording is in
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: the public domain. Read by Alistair letter to an eminent citizen,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: Part seven six. To crown the honor of the gout,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: it is not to be cured. The gout defies all
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: your gross gellnical methods and all your exalted chemical preparations
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: for the conjunct causes thereof, as the learned Willis confesses,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: lie in parts so very remote that the virtues of
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: no medicines can reach them. And Heaven be praised for it.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: For why, sir, would you cure, as you call it,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: the gout which gives you pain without danger, a better
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: taste of health by an acquaintance with pain, a knowledge
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: of future things, freedom from the headache and from fevers.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: Bless us that any man should wish to be rid
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: of the gout, for want of which he may become
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: obnoxious to fevers and headache, be blinded in his eyes, understanding,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: lose the taste of his health, and the security of
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: his life. I hope you an idea, Sir, shall be
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: better advised, and to show that we are so, and
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: at the same time to set the world a good example.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: I hope we shall neither of us tamper with the
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: doctor for the cure of the gap, which really and
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: truly is incurable, unless the patient be to be killed,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: which is what the doctor's medicines aim at, perhaps not
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: what he directly aims at himself, for his heart is
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: chiefly upon his fee, his prayers that his patients neither
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: die nor recover, at least not die while he's worth
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: a penny. But when his last penny is spent, then
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: the miserable creature is forsaken, like the poor woman in
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: the Gospel, and may perish for all him, unless Heaven
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: has a miracle in store for a poor sinner that
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: has been tormented by our nasty d underline before his time,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: but left. I should be in thought, in vindication of
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: the honor of the count too severe against the pretenders
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: to cure it. I shall argue against them from their
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: own confessions. We may say of every medocasta, whether a
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: college or a stage doctor habimusk constitentum reem the whole
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: clan of them are homicides by their own confession. Other
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: wicked people put on the guise of honesty for the
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: better perpetration of their crimes. But physicians own the r
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: underscore why of their art. Indeed, to save themselves from
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: public infamy, they give this softening turn to their scandalous cause.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: The principles of their art, they say, are difficult to
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: be understood and uncertain to be relied on. And then
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: also the temperament of the body on which they practice
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: can be but guessed at. So the success of the
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: most learned practice tishna can be but casual. Now that
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: after this these men should be entertained, and so general
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: admittance given to their practice does evidently prove that the
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: generality of men, when they lose their health, lose their
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: wits together with it. I will allow that it were
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: reasonable for a sick man liberally to part with his
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: guineas for his health, if the doctors that have their
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: money in hand were sure of restoring health, or upon failure,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: would refund, but to pay down ready money for a
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: lottery chance where tis great odds. But the adventurer increases
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: his malady and hastens his death. I, for my part,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: declare against it, and am persuaded that no one who
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: considers rightly but would keep his money and bear his
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: burthen A spare and easy diet shall be always my
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: physic and I will leave it to nature to do
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: her own work. But let us come to some more
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: particular acknowledgements of these deadly enemies of mankind. Galon that
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: is still revered as a god by modern practitioners, acknowledges
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: it is impossible to find out a medicine that shall
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: not do any great good one way and not do
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: as much hurt another. The learner doctor Hammond, fatally experienced
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: the truth of this acknowledgment. The medicine which was prescribed
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: him to cure the gout, moved the gravels from his kidneys, which,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: being too big to pass the euretas, choked the channel
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: and deprived him of his life that way. Cornelius Agrippa
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: tells us of one Rassis, a physician of note, who,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: considering the foolish credulity of patience and the conscientious ignorance
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: of professors in physics, advised that never above one doctor
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: should be made use of at a time, giving this reason,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: because the mistake of a single man was less day injurious,
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: and I would advise never to use any For as
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: the mistake of one man is less dangerous than a
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: consult of them, so having nothing to do with anyone
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: is less dangerous than the mistake of one. For nature
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: can commit no mistake. But if not loaded with luxury,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: not disturbed with physic will vigorously strive to throw off
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: every noxious disease. Such the gout is not for nature
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: throwing off morbific matter to the remoter parts of the body.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: Does designedly beget the gout and make use of that
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: admirable remedy to cure diseases already gotten, and to prevent others.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: But it is not mere reason which I rely upon
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: when I advise men to trust nature alone for their
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: recovery and never go to a physician. I have the
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: greatest authority to support my advice. Assa, in the thirty
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: ninth year of his reign, was diseased in his feet,
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: as I am now, which hinders me from running to
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: my commentators. But I remember the phrase of the Septuagint
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: is EMMELOOISTI tay podas his feet were soft and tender,
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: swelled with gout. That must be the meaning until his
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: disease gout was exceeding great Yet in his disease on
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: Tea Melamia aute in the extreme softness and tenderness of
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: his gout, but sought not the Lord but to the physician.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: I do not see how our doctors of physic can
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: evade the force of this text in defense of their profession.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: Fortis a very weak and precarious reply which they make
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: when they tell us that Assah is blamed not directly
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: for seeking to the physicians, but for not trusting in
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: the Lord when he saw to them. Now I will
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: grant these gentlemen that it is the duty of patience
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: to trust in the Lord when they seek to the physicians. Nay,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: it is their duty to trust in the Lord, and
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: then above any other time, for then they run themselves
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: into those hazards that if the Lord does not help them,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: tis odds. But they miscarry. But I would have these physicians,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: who make but sorry interpreters of scripture, to consider that
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: the text sets seeking the Lord and seeking the physicians
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: in opposition to one another. Plainly enough, implying that the
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: former was his duty, the latter his fault. But our physicians,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: it seems, would have seek to the Lord and them both,
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: as if the Lord could not do his own work
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: without them. Odi profanum genus. Hence, sir, it is plain
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: to me that they are an order of men that
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: care not much what they say or do, to uphold
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: their own honor and keep their ungodly trade agoing. But
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: therefore I would wish all unhealthy people who have bought
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: their misery of the professors, and all honest gentlemen who
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: are preserved by the salutary gout in the land of
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: the living, to prefer a bill in Parliament against this
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: destructive order of men, that by a strong cathartic act,
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: they may be purged out of His Majesty's dominions. I
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: will engage that there's never a family of the nation,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: but shall, by this means, besides their health, save their taxes,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: so that a vigorous war may be continued against France
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: till the messieurs are not worth a leave, and nobody
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: with us ever the poorer for such a useful decree.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: We are not without a precedent in history. The wise
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: Romans are Marcus Porsius Cato banished physicians not only from Rome,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: but also from Italy, which council, it may be reasonably thought,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: contributed not a little to the increase of their people.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: For as where the most lawyers are, there are the
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: most quarrels and contentions, so where the most physicians are,
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: there are the most funerals. And some say where the
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: most divines, they're the most differences about religion. But that's
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: not the fault of the divines. For if the magistrate
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: would let the strongest party alone, they would force all
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: the rest to be of their opinion. But I'm afraid
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: I forget myself in too long a digression. What I
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: ought chiefly to insist on is the supertive excellence of
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: the gout, which is never to be removed. The fear
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: of losing a blessing takes off from the pleasure of
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: enjoying it. Thieves may plunder your house, age will ruin
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: your beauty. Envy may esperse your reputation, Bribes corrupt your faith.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: But the gout is a sure inheritance. Neither thieves nor knaves,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: neither time nor envy nor anything else can despoil you
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: of it. A man may himself has a mind to it,
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: squander his estate, blemish his comely form, injure his fame,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: and renounce his honesty. But let him get rid of
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: the gout. If he can that blessing, he may take
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: comfort in being secure, that is, for his life. They
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: say there's more care and trouble in keeping an estate
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: than getting it. As for the gout, there may be
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: some trouble in getting it, though that is mixed with
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: pleasure too. But no man is put to the least
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: care or trouble for the safe keeping of the gout.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: He may endure misery enough, indeed, if he seeks to
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: the physician for the cure of it. You cannot be
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: always young and handsome, but gouty once, and gouty ever.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: Thence came the proverb drink the claret and you have
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: the gout, And drink no claret, and you still have it.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: The goal, tis true, is the reward of some works.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: But there's no forfeiting it, and therefore tis preferable to
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: a crown imperial. Possibly a wise and worthy person may
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: secure his virtue against dangerous temptations, but then he must
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: be always upon his guard, but let him take as
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: little care of himself as he pleases. He shall never
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: have the less goout for his loose way of living.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: But possibly it may be objected that the gout curing
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: other diseases, and not being to be cured itself, becomes
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: an encouragement to intemperance and lust, the lustful and intemperate
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: drink and love, on reckoning that the gout will carry
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: off the evil consequences of wild excess and foolish passion.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: Now I will not lie for the gout, as much
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: as I honor it, if it were not for this
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: one en dash and dash and dash en dash abatement
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: to a physic for an angel. But that the reader
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: may not reproach me for a gross philosophical error, I
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: declare that I do not mean for the spiritual substance
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: of an angel, for that I well know needs no
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: physic of one sort or other, but for the corporeal
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: vehicle which an angel may chance to assume, which vehicle,
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: being rectified by the gout, may with less trouble be
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: actuated by the angel. Sir, I thought to have taken
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: a longer view of the excellency of the noble gout
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: from this sublime scent, which represents it with its greatest advantage,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: the advantage of being incurable. But alas the violent paroxysm
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: which I have labored under for these three short days
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: and nights abates, the intenseness of my pains considerably remits,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: and therefore I am forced to break off abruptly, For
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: I am sensible that no man can do honor to
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: the gout by a just and adequate pandyric, but he that,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: at the time of writing feels it in extremity. Phoinis
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: End of the Honor of the Gout by philanimous Rus