Page:Of the Gout - Stukeley - 1734.djvu/112

Rh meals or business. And they were as careful in the one as the other. And good reason there is for it. What were joints and muscles and tendons and oyl-glands given us for, but motion? Life consists in it, and health is not to be expected without it. Motion contributes exceedingly to hinder the coalition of these salts in the blood, to break them in pieces, to expell them by sweat, urine, perspiration, and to keep the whole animal machine in due order. And this should be done at least till sweat is provok'd. No doubt the intermission of manly exercises so much practis'd by our ancestors, is one reason of the increase of the gout. Areteus, Cap. II. 12. speaks, how one in the olympic games by running put off a fitt of the gout and got the victory. Celsus II. 11. says, you must oppose a vehement evil with a vehement remedy. 'Tis happy for us we have in our hands a gentler method. Nor henceforth will it be necessary to put nature upon so great a stress, as the quack in Galen, method. XII. 1. who cur'd dysenterys. Those that were able to bear it escap'd with a cure; but the rest dy'd.

Lastly, I recommend the antient method of oyling with sweet oyl at least once a month, the oftner the better: And at least upon the feet and joints, that have been affected. If that oyl be impregnated with