Page:Of the Gout - Stukeley - 1734.djvu/100

Rh to taste of many dishes at a time. And in 95, he says many daintys create many diseases: I add more especially the gout, which is equivalent to many. Have a care of intemperance immediately after recovery from a fitt, when Areteus observes people are apt to live fast; like those escap'd ab inferis: they are for repairing the lost time and constitution too, but erroneously. Temperance must be inculcated at all times, for tho' we conquer in every fitt, yet the fewer battles, the better for our natural strength. A habit is always growing better or worse. Better it will be if we cure the gout without oyls. Porphyry in vita Plotini tells us of Rogatianus a Roman Senator. He was cripled with the distemper, and was carryed in a chair daily, to hear Plotinus, the Platonic philosopher. Becoming his disciple he grew exceedingly abstemious, and lost his gout. Let not the doctrines of Christianity be less influential on our lives than the hopeless Lectures of Plotinus. Take Hippocrates his authority, II de prædict. that the gout is not to be cured without temperance. Oribasius says, if people be slaves to their appetites, we ought not to undertake their cure. I doubt not but if we be so complaisant to the ordinances of our Church; as now and then to keep a fast day, we shall find our present account in it