Page:Of the Gout - Stukeley - 1734.djvu/108

Rh affirms, he has cured many with sharp clysters, the pain going off immediately.

Smoaking tobacco has been thought part of the prophylactic regimen in this distemper. Sir Theodore Mayern gives a recipe for it. Doubtless it draws off some of the salts. The late Mr. Sturt the eminent engraver told me, that in a violent fitt of the gout, which lasted him for many months; he took a fancy to smoak as a relief to the tediousness of solitude. It made him very sick at first, but persisting in it, it caus'd a vast salivation to the quantity of 3 pints a day; he mended apace and never had a fitt after.

Riding must be affirmed an excellent exercise for podagrics, tho' we have not Hippocrate&#39;s consent. Walking must be prais'd with moderation, only to provoke the oyl-glands to throw out their juices, and to invigorate them.

There are two things practis'd by the ancients very commendably, well worthy our imitation in the present case. The first is dayly bathing and oyling: the other dayly exercise. We find by innumerable remains of hypocausts in our island, that the Romans: were extremely careful of bathing here, and the more so, probably, because of its northerly situation, One would imagin among all the refin'd politeness of our age it should have been intro-