are not so soon fashioned and perfected, as is the compendious texture of lesser animals. So it is with the most noble arts and sciences, with the most useful inventions, when first brought to light; every man is taken up with unactive extasy, and lazy admiration, greatly pleased to be taught, and let into mystery, and as well content to know no more than is taught him. Time passes silently on, and ages steal away, before there starts up a studious inquisitive person, who bends his wit to improve the discoveries of his ancestors, and raise them to their just perfection.

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Now of this observation, I am of the mind, there is not again in nature so clean an instance as the gout affords us. The gout, first, passed for no other but an evil spirit, which an exorcising priest attacked with charms, before ever the physician fell foul upon him with poisonous recipe's. The physician, purely to force a trade, imposed upon the people, that the gout was a disease. Having cheated them with this false opinion, he plagued them with real tortures, all which he was pleased to christen by the general name of therapeutick method, in which his barbarous executions thus follow one another. First phlebotomy, then catharticks, emeticks, hypnoticks, the and all; and, while the inside of the poor patient is thus miserably racked and confounded, he dawbs the outside with anodyne applications, unguents, and cataplasms; and, when all is done, I will give them my body to practise on (though I had rather the executioner had it to dispatch outright) if plain cathartick-gruel, and the cataplasm of a fresh cow-turd, do not work greater wonders, than any thing they can pretend to. From Germany, nay, from beyond the Alps, they come, with hard names, exotick cant, and baneful poison, to allay the paroxysm and remove the procatarxis of the gout; but, God be thanked, their practice decays, and must do more and more every day, now that it is so plainly discovered, that the gout needs no remedy, not being, in truth and proper speaking, a disease, but a sovereign antidote, against the most dangerous diseases. And therefore people of the best sense are content to let it take its course; and not only so, but they are proud to publish the satisfaction they take, in one or other advantage, which the gout affords them. For instance, as to the foreknowledge of weather: the gout never twitches their nerves, but they will be telling others what changes are towards. Now, that which I propose is this, that people should not think it enough to know thus much of the gout, but study to improve and increase their knowledge; for, no doubt, more may be made of this blessing, than ever yet was done by the happy man that has enjoyed it longest. I am persuaded, that if the fortunate patient would be at the pains to observe all the motions of the gout, in his pinching, smarting, gauling accesses; his gnawing, stabbing, burning paroxysms; in his evacuating, tender, remitting recesses, he might quickly come to wind a storm, so long before, that, in a short time, no owners would think their ship safe, but with a gouty master, nor would any experienced seaman, that wanted a ship, offer himself to the merchants, but

upon crutches.

Possibly here some nice person may object, that it is a sad thing to be a cripple; I reply, in lameness two things are to be considered, the unsightly gate, and the afflicting pain. As to the unsightly gate, set the Italian proverb against it:

He knows not Venus in her perfect sweetness,
Who has never lain with a lame mistress ;

And Montaigne tells us, that the same is said of men, as well as women; for the Queen of Amazons answered the personable Scythian, who courted her to love, agısa xwλòs oiqui, lame men make the best gallants. In that female republick, to prevent the dominion of the males, they lamed them arms and legs in their infancy, believing that they would be rather the better, for the use which they should make of them thereafter. Montaigne gives a philosophical reason for the advantage accruing by lameness, either to men or women, viz. the legs and thighs not receiving their due aliment, it falls out, that the genital parts above are the fuller, better supplied, and more vigorous.

2. As to the pain proceeding from lameness, I will not, to diminish that, tell the objector a long story from the reasonings of Aristotle, or the practice of Cato; but only pray him to consider the lower sort of people, who know little of example, and mind as little of precept. Nature is their guide, and this their familiar practice. They call the phthisick, says Montaigne, a cough; the bloody flux is no more with them than a looseness; a pleurisy, but a stitch in the side; and as they softly name, so they patiently endure these grievances.

If the mercenary adversaries of the gout, the doctors, have any other objections against a Bone-almanack, besides what I have answered, let them be published; I will fairly and fully answer them also, or renounce my reverence for the gout.

O! That I had an infallible medicine, which would both certainly and speedily cause the gout (wine and women are tedious and uncertain ways of purchasing the mighty blessing) I would not doubt but to make more of it, than ever Daffy did of his elixir, or any strolling mountebank of his nostrum. The fair for Rider's almanack, Partridge's almanack, Al-ch's almanack, lasts but one month in the year; but I might vend Gout-almanacks, and Bonealmanacks, all the year round. Here I suspect, that the malevolent doctors, that get their living by their mischievous craft in practising on the gout, will object, that all, which I have hitherto urged in its commendations, has a very great allay; for, though it is not dangerous, yet it is painful; though the patient has lucid intervals, yet he has violent paroxysms; though he be a prophet, yet the spirit, which inspires, rends him. But of these objectors I would fain know, whether holy precious enthusiasm be not a furious ungovernable impulse; whether lucid intervals are not more eligible than a constant, weak, and sullen light; whether pain, without danger, is not better than ease without security? I am of

opinion, that our compositions are no more able to endure pure and unmixt felicities, than Semele, the half-gone mother of Bacchus, to abide the warm congress of the Olympick Jove, circled with all his glories. Yet, to silence envy itself, the next step we ascend, we shall see the gout dealing to his patients a benefit, so wonderous, refined, pleasant, and useful, that he must be a very dull creature, that can seriously think on this, and not passionately wish, deliberately consider it, and not heartily labour, by all honest ways and means, to deserve the gout.

4. Gouty persons are most free from the headach; the reason of which is this:

The heavy recrements of the blood and nervous juice always fall downward to the gouty joints. The nerves of the head, the fibres and the membranes, whereof there are many placed above and under the skull; the two meninges, the tunicles of the nerves, the pericranium, and other periostia, the muscles, the panniculus carnosus, and lastly, the skin itself, are all freed from a world of torment by means of the medicinal gout, which attracts to exterior remote parts vicious humours of various denominations, and there sets them on fire, wastes and evacuates them. Persons much favoured by the gout, upon every long absence of that best friend of theirs (whether occasioned by unknown accidents, or unwise recourse to the mischievous tampering of a wicked doctor) exchange their freedom from the gout, for pain more intense and dangerous; but, of all other pains, they are extremely subject to the head-ach; something of a cloud, more or less, always hangs over their brain; but as soon as ever the gout pleases (forgiving their ingratitude) to revisit them, presently the weather breaks up, the nerves are relaxed, the fibres unmolested, the membranes and muscles recover their right tone; while the inimicous contesting particles, thrown off from boiling blood, and turgid nervous juice, fall down to the remote parts of the body; and then the understanding grows clear, the thoughts brisk and active; and the patient is fitted, whatever his station and employment is in the world, to do the duty thereof better than ever. I have been told of several sea-captains (and I have reason to believe the relator) who, during a fit of the gout, happening to meet the enemy, bestirred themselves with a vigour that forgot their pain, and gave their order with a steddier presence of mind, than ever they were masters of before. I have the honour to be known to a person of quality, who has obliged the age with several instructive pieces, who never published a sorry trifle, nor ever any thing so absolutely perfect, useful, and entertaining, as when he lay under a course of the gout. Then would he dictate like an angel, or, which is much the same, a man inspired, to his ravished amanuensis. That amanuensis of his has told me, though he loved his master very well, yet he was always sorry for his recovery; for then his strength failed him, and he was no more than another writer, I mean a writer of the first rate though. I know nothing that a man, when

he enjoys the gout, is unfit for, but jumping, running of races, or foot-ball. The Amazons, if they be not belied, coveted to admit strangers, flagrante paroxysmo: had Montaigne ever met with the MS. whence I have the notice, he would have given us a philoso phical reason for it. The gout being thus beneficial, I bless myself to think, that any patient should be so much his own enemy, as to be weary of it; any doctor so much an enemy to mankind, as to offer at the cure; but cure it they cannot, whatever they pretend, unless they kill the patient. For my part, I know no difference in the earth between a doctor of physick and a tinker, save that the doctor has more of the tinker, the tinker more of the doctor in him. For, the tinker effectually stops that particular hole which he is hired to stop, though he makes two or three for it; but the doctor does but disturb the gout, which he undertakes to cure ; and, when the vicious humours of the body are not suffered to have their course to the exterior remote parts, there to be sacrificed on the internodial altars of the gout, they revert with fury and indignation, dangerously assault the vitals, diffuse their venom over all the viscera, corrupt the stomach, but more especially affect the head, with violent pains, which are often followed by dangerous swooning, a vertigo, a failing of memory; nay, and sometimes a downright delirium. Thus physicians cure their patients of the gout! Then doubly blessed are the poor and needy, who, when they have the gout, and do not understand their own happiness, cannot be at the charge to get rid of it, by a cure of the doctors. Nay, beside the mischievous consequences of their meddling, their very meddling itself, is a sorer pain, than the gout, a thousand times: so that man's intellectuals must not be right, who would not wish to have his head-ach cured by the gout, rather than by the doctors methods, i. e. by being purged and blooded, cupped and fluxed, stifled with spirit of hartshorn and soot, drenched with cephalick juleps and waters - Cold as those that extinguished the vital heat of that renowned thrice illustrious heroe, hight old Simon the king. The gout is a specifick, a single, proper, and effectual re medy for the head-ach: by a strong revulsion it attracts morbifick matter from the nobler parts, and, ever while you live, say I, keep pain from your head, and sorrow from your heart. The honest old beldame made sport for her neighbours, when she applied the clyster to her forehead, the part affected. Again, when her neighbours turned up her blind-side, and plaid her pipe at her virgin avenue, that was a jest to her: Marry Gap, quoth she, it is the upper end that akes, and you give physick to the lower; but the clyster was a good remedy for the head-ach, though planted at a distance, and so the gout. How necessary a friend to the head the medicinal gout is, keeping it easy, clean, and free from all mor bifick matter which disturbs the brain, we might partly guess, from the subtle observation of the famous Confucius upon gouty persons, which is communicated to us, by one of the chastest histo rians among the veracious emissaries (for the Chinese are blessed with the gout, as well as the Europeans :) It is possible, said the

wise Mandarin, for a lame, gouty person to be a knave, even in our own country have I known some such; but who ever knew a gouty cripple that was a fool? In a book of that great master of morals and politicks, presented by a Mandarin of Confucius's own race, to a learned Jesuit, who has inriched the King of France's library with it, (but, I suppose, the book was there reposited, since a certain person finished his travels :) These farther remarks are delivered, natural fools never acquire the gout, the sons of gouty persons are defended from dulness and folly by the sins of their parents; or, if in their minority, their understandings happen to lie a little backward, they shall no sooner enter on their gouty inheritance, but a bright illumination brings the same forwards. Whatever a man's natural powers are, they are so improved by the gout, so refined, so heightened in the paroxysm, that I am almost tempted to call it a sort of natural inspiration. Facile est inventis addere, what the noble Confucius has admirably well observed of the gout, viz. ، That it is a perfect deletory of folly, prompts me to think, that it would be worthy inquiry, whether the gout is not as effectual against madness; and we may reasoably believe that it is so, if, upon examination it should be found, that there are no gouty people in Bedlam; and then for the recovery of those poor creatures to their wits, again, it will not need much consideration, whether they ought not to be excused the hard blows which their barbarous keepers deal them; and the therapeutick method of purging, bleeding, cupping, fluxing, vomiting, clystering, juleps, apozemes, powders, confections, epithemes, and cataplasms, with which the more barbarous doctors torment them; and, instead of their learned torture, indulged, for a time only, a little intemperance, as to wine, or women, or so; or the scholar's delight of feeding worthily, and sleeping heartily, whereby they might get the gout, and then their madness were cured.

Many and great are the advantages which accrue to mortal men from the gout, as cannot but sufficiently appear to your worship from what I have, in running haste, observed; but far more numerous, and unconceivably vast, are the improvements, which a man, worthy of the gout, and sensible of his happiness, might, with attentive care and sedulous observance, make. Yet I shall not insist on conjectural topicks to do justice to so effectual a promoter of the safety of human life; but proceed on those benefits, which are the objects of sense; so that, if there be any person, that shall think, or speak ill of the gout, he must be one, that does not desire, or deserve to live. It is a lofty height to which I have advanced your worship; four steep ascents you have already climbed, but the honour of the gout

.Caput inter nubila condit.

Can your head bear to mount a fifth? But, why do I ask that ques« tion? the gout itself will enable you.

5. The gout preserves its patients from the great danger of fevers.