Page:Of the Gout - Stukeley - 1734.djvu/85

of a fitt of the gout? How does he tacitly reprehend the present way of thinking in this distemper, of wishing joy upon the access of a fitt: as if a long and most miserable life was a blessing? As if it really gave along life, or was a truly judicial and salutary crisis. When at best it must be call'd such a goal-delivery only as consigns the prisoner to the executioner. Senseless must those be that maintain the pain of the gout is useful, and by no means to be rebated. 'Tis a high absurdity, and no other than a cloak of ignorance of the cure. The gout from the beginning has been deservedly call'd the opprobrium medicorum, and in good measure owing to our selves, who childishly discourage any attempts upon it. And even at this day, there are found some of little and low minds both in the Town and Country, who are willing enough to oppose Dr. Roger's remedy, because they were not the inventors themselves, when they cannot pretend to any cure of their own, or because they envy mankind so great a comfort. Such must be strangers to the generous and noble principle of philanthropy, that highest vertue our nature is capable of arriving to, an imitation of the supreme Being, the το αγαθον, an endeavor to do all the good we can: but especially to so great a part of mankind laboring under

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