Page:Of the Gout - Stukeley - 1734.djvu/91

so, in another sense. We know that in the small pox, there is a secondary fever, owing to the maturation of the pus, and to the great quantity of it which enters the blood, by its long stay, and excites that fever. This is not all the inconvenience of it. Nature assimilates it into nutriment, and thereby lays the groundwork of an ill constitution, which we often observe after the small pox. The like we may very rationally conceive, to be the case of a fitt of the gout; and we find by experience, that when we permit the case to nature; after we have drag'd on life thro' the first stage of a month or two, and fancy we are on the mending hand; there comes a recrudescence, a secondary fitt, or what we call the echo of the gout. This runs thro' every part again, in the same order as at first, tho' perhaps not with equal pain, because its strength has been rebated by the preceding fitt. It is certainly owing to a re-entry of the humor into the blood. And tho' nature by long tract of time, so far overcomes the venom of the distemper, that by slow degrees we get abroad again: yet even then we have too much reason to affirm, the victory is but partial. So much of the dregs is return'd into the blood, the tediousness of the confinement, that it becomes a sure hostage and the leaven of another unwel-

come