Page:Of the Gout - Stukeley - 1734.djvu/94

There are many instances, where people have had one fitt of the gout and no more; nature some way or other finding means totally to exterminate the disease and its feeds. Pliny observes this, sponte desiit N. H. XXVI. 10. There are a few instauces, where they have escap'd with two or three fitts, the constitution being chang'd. Bur most generally the crisis is so imperfect, that the first fitt ensures its self for life, and is the earnest of the future. When those deleterious miasms are once got into the blood, we find by too frequent and sad experience, that in the ordinary way of treatment in this distemper, by which I mean no treatment at all, they are never totally extirpated. And this the excellent Sydenham confirms, "morbi fomes nunquam per hoc omne intervallum perfecte dissipatus." Again in another place, "perraro materia morbifica omnis a paroxysmo quantumlibet diuturno & crudeli, ita plene egeritur, ut nullæ prorsus in corpore reliquiæ sint, eodem jam elapso." But I have the greatest confidence that by early and seasonable application of the oyls which compleatly deadens the matter of the fitt, there will be thousands of instances, (where great irregularity of living hinders not) of the distemper taking a final leave after a visit or two. And since gout and stone pro-

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