Page:Of the Gout - Stukeley - 1734.djvu/41

Rh and revels. It passes by hard fare and industry, and subsists in jollity, feasting and midnight debauches. 'Tis not only dominus morborum, but morbus dominorum. All savory things convey into the blood great quantitys of these salts, which are permanent and incorruptible bodys, of great activity, solidity, force, attraction, and withal very fiery and caustic. All these qualitys are heigthned exceedingly and spiritualiz'd, the matter is rectify'd, as we may very properly call if, by various transmissions from one animal to another, from various concoctions, digestions, cohobations, fermentations. So that 'tis no wonder if at last, when they meet in a gouty person who ufes not labor and exercise enough, from the smothness of surface and solidity they strongly attract one another, and assemble too much together; from the sharpness and hardness of their points they lancinate; from their fiery malignancy they burn, and from nature's expelling them as much as she can, out of the habit of the body, they cause what we call a fitt of the gout. Wise nature (as we name the established order of causes and effects, flowing from the Almighty Will at creation) throws off these pestiferous salts, that they may not offend the general œconomy, nor attack the Capitol. She throws them off to the great joints, as much as possible, that