Page:Of the Gout - Stukeley - 1734.djvu/89

Rh unhappy the longer it is in killing. Hence we may banish all the formidable apparatus of bed-cradles, chairs, couches and automata, shoes of cloath, cutt or lac'd, gloves, stockings of various dimensions, sticks and crutches, springs and wheels, and a thousand contrivances of machinery for ease, motion and carriage. Instead of the old Egyptian, Scythian, Chinese, Japanese burnings, needles, moxa's; instead of the directions of horror among the old Greek and Latin writers, secato, urito, we need nothing but to anoint. A prescription so soft and gentle, that were it not for a distemper, we should reckon it a delicacy, a revival of antient luxury. And did we practise the athletic sports of the antients, we should use it every day for pleasure: it gives such a vigour, such an easyness of motion to the joint, sinews, and tendons, that new Adam-like in Milton, we wonder as we walk. We say as he,

With fragrance and with joy my heart o'er-flowed; My self I then perus'd, and limb by limb Survey'd, and sometimes went, and sometimes ran, With supple joints and lively vigour led. P. L. VIII. If