Page:Of the Gout - Stukeley - 1734.djvu/62

Rh other oyly substances, and that they involve, and as it were sheath the volatile salts of the venomous liquor, and prevent their shooting out into those chrystallin spicula which cause the deadly mischief. In the next chapter he says, the oleum scorpionum, or the oyl wherein scorpions have been infus'd, is a present remedy for the sting of this creature, as the axungia viperina for the viper. He says the viperine venom is the quintessence or most active part of those animal juices, with which the viper is nourish'd, and so of the scorpion and other poisonous animals: the like we may suppofe of the matter of the gout, being the quintessence or most active part of the rich blood of arthritics unbroke by labor.

I have known several instances of people obnoxious to the gout, that have been seiz'd with a sudden and most violent inflammation in the face, a small tumor arising like a plague sore immensely fiery, which breaks and runs with a scalding water or sanies, and then heals up. No doubt but this happily discharges a fitt of the gout, and sufficiently shows the poysonous nature of that humour which causes it. So that Lucian not improperly compares the pain of the gout to the gnawings of the hell-hound Cerberus, to the poysonous bite of Echidna a hell-snake, and