Page:Of the Gout - Stukeley - 1734.djvu/59

Rh skin under it, and well we may say of if in the poet's words,

Tristius haud illis monstrum, nec sœvior ulla Pestis, & ira Deûm Stygiis sese extulit undis.———————— contactuque omnia fœdant Immundo —————.

And this is a thing common in all poysonous cases, and surfeits, as the country people call them. The whole skarf-skin comes off wherever the venom has touch'd. But I observe when we perform the cure of the gout by means of our oyls, taking it very early; the skin does not come off. The poyson is extinguished. What little of substance there is in it, gives nature no trouble, she probably carrys it away in that very turbid water which we make during the operation. And if we suppose the salts are not absolutely and entirely blunted by the oyls, we may justly think they have but activity and pungency enough left, the better to conduct them to the urinary organs. And thus the excellent Sydenham in the end of his terrible pathology of the gout says, "a most intolerable itching, in the foot affected, comes upon the fitt retir'd; especially between the toes, scaly parts then come off; and the feet are stript of the skin, as if we had taken poyson, quasi epoto veneno"