Page:Of the Gout - Stukeley - 1734.djvu/49

Rh hopeless yoke of this malady, how many do we daily see? Lucian mentions many of the famous heroes of old among the Greeks. Such as king Priamus, Achilles, Oedipus, Proesilaus, Ulysses, Bellerophon, Plesthenes, Philoctetes.

Charles the great, the emperor, who us'd to conquer all, was at last overcome by the gout, as Sennertus tells us. So the great prince of Conde. Nor does it make less havock in the learned world. The famous Tyrannion the grammarian dy'd of it.

Ennius ipse pater, dum pocula siccat iniqua, Hoc vitio tales fertur meruisse dolores. Q. Seren.

The learned Vossius, and innumerable more, nay, it spares not the professors themselves. Even Radcliff the great genius of our age, as Sydenham of the preceding, both compos'd themselves with inevitable patience at its approach. They who repel'd death all around them, tamely awaited his last stroke, when armed with this dart.

Thus from all ages it has appear'd an equal difficulty to bear and to remove the gout. Sydenham, a great glory to our country and art, sagacious in all other distempers to a wonder, after 40 years, suffering, observing, studying it, at last complains there's no remedy: lyes calmly down,  Rh