Page:Of the Gout - Stukeley - 1734.djvu/113

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
[ 118 ]

with warm oyly herbs, and be heated in a spoon over live coals when used, it will be still more servicefable. This will exceedingly strengthen the cuticular glands that have undergone such severe treatment, and the joint-glands likewise. Great will be the use of it, and the pleasure attending it not less.

I find that unction was part of the most ancient practise of physick mention'd in Æschylus's Prometheus vinctus, of which we may read a learned account in Bishop Pearson on the Creed, p. 80. "Prometheus pretends to be the inventor of the art of physick, that before him there was no medicin neither to be taken internally in a solid or liquid form, nor externally by way of inunction". As the Scholiast well expounds it. Atheneus, deipn.

I have nothing to add, but the directions in the use of the oyls, as drawn up by the Preparer himself.

Heat in a silver spoon, ladle or porringer, as much only as will serve for one using, and for one joint at a time, because the volatile parts evaporate. Shake the bottle first, embrocate the part affected with your hand, warmed, for a quarter of an hour before the fire or a chafing dish of coals, rub the oyls well in, and them wrap the part up in flannel. This is to be done once or twice a day as the nature of

the