Page:Of the Gout - Stukeley - 1734.djvu/73

Rh O nymph of adamant, relentless Dame! even Jove&#39;s hot thunder trembles at thy name; Neptunian surges cannot quench thy flame. Hells squalid Monarch dreads thy power divine, his scepter drops, and weaker owns than thine. Thee joints nodose and throbbing ancles please, and solemn pace and couches void of ease. Thee frying heels and burning knees adore, Rent bones, crackt sinews, nights incessant roar: sighs are thy incense, groans the melody, and yelling shrieks; to hymn thy Majesty.

Thro' a course of years under this severe discipline, every joint in the body is visited; as it passes from one to another for proper pabulum, is exhausted and ruin'd. When all the outworks are demolish'd, it makes an approach to the citadel. It certainly spoils all the joint-glands in the body, it licks up all the fat of the flesh, membranes and every thing that is oyly; so that the limbs waste and shrivel, whilst the joints protuberate with nodes and chalk-stones. That fiery acid in the blood being never thro'ly extinguish'd, it perverts all the juices, every fecretion, every admission of new chyle, into its own kind: the vital fluid is thro'ly podagric. The constitution by a