Page:Of the Gout - Stukeley - 1734.djvu/56

Rh whole limb; and produce a most fiery pain. Hippocrates aphor. 47. § 6. observes the gout is a true inflammation. And when it seizes on the stomach it produces the same symptoms as poyson swallow'd. 2. I argue that 'tis a poyson from the juvantia & lædentia, heat enrages it, the warmth of the bed and warm flannels do no more good, than keep it where it is fix'd upon the part. The cool air or cold water sensibly abates the inflammatory heat and pain, but then the drive it out of the part, as uselessly as the former method, but more dangerously; because it recurs somewhere else. Neither the heat makes any evaporation of that humor, nor does the cold any ways extinguish it. These bare qualitys have no useful effect. Again, 3. The 2 only methods of cure, the moxa and our oyls, both confirm my position. 'Tis not to be doubted that the moxa has often cured the gout: but 'tis a tremendous remedy. It will not be easy to persuade patients to bear the slow fire of a wooly plant burning upon their flesh for a minute or two. Nor is the cure so infallible. But certain it is, that where burning whether actually or potentially, cures the gout; it cures it merely as a poyson: the fire of the poyson submitting to the greater fire, as a hot iron cures the bite