Page:Of the Gout - Stukeley - 1734.djvu/87

trifling occasion, any evacuation, a wrench, treading awry, a small blow, bruise, wound, a cold, excessive hot weather or cold, an easterly wind, an alteration of weather, a sitting up in the night, a little change of dyet, liquor, constitution, bad wine, French wine, stale drink, walking. From any of these the gout will frequently break forth. Upon a small variation in the crasis of the blood, these volatile salts that hitherto had been held asunder, cluster together, and fly off like an unforeseen explosion. By lessning the quantity in venæfection, by violently hot weather evaporating some fluid parts of the blood, by cold weather constringing the pores and preventing an expulsion of the salts in sweat or perspiration, by any thing that happens to the renal glands, or hinders the ordinary separation of urinary salts, by purging, which diminishes some of the fluidity of the blood, squeezing it thro' the intestinal glands and many more such causes, the salts are more strongly attracted to one another, than by the blood they swim in, and so they open the scene of this wretched tragedy. And those that are obnoxious to it are generally people of good sense, capable of reflecting upon their unhappy situation in life, which does but double their misery.

So