Page:Of the Gout - Stukeley - 1734.djvu/11

Rh that it cured them all, and there was no ill consequence attending, even to this time.

Were I to pretend, to give a rationale of the gout, in few words, it would be thus. In people that live plentifully, have a good stomach, and drink strong liquors, if they don't use a proportionate degree of labor or exercise; in a gouty constitution, they must expect to be visited by that irksom guest. If nature cannot form a fitt of the gout, they suffer worse, perhaps by some violent or fatal distemper. For health consists chiefly in a due proportion, between the intaking and expending. Hence people of fortune and those of a studious, contemplative life, are most liable to it. Laborers that fare hardly and work daily, are sure to be free. Women are so, for the most part, because nature in them has it in her power, better to regulate the quantity and abate of a surcharge, than with us. And, thereby they remedy the inconveniences of a sedentary life. But men are design'd for action, which breaks in pieces the blood, scours all the glands, promotes every secretion, preserves the equilibrium between the solids and fluids; and next to food, is the conservator of the animal life. A rich state of blood loaded with salts, sulphurs, and spirituous particles, at length kindles up a certain fiery phosphorus, which nature exterminates into