Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/319

Rh their own writings. As for me, whom you see in the same manner, be assured I have none other disease, than a swelling in my legs, whereof I say no more, since your art may farther certify you."

I thereupon seated myself upon his bedside, and placing my patient on my right hand, to judge the better in what he affirmed of his legs, felt his pulse.

For it is Hippocrates's maxim, that if the pulse have a dead motion, with some unequal bearings it is a symptom of a sciatica, or a swelling in the thigh or leg; in which assertion of his, this pulse confirmed me.

I began now to be in hopes, that his case had been misrepresented, and that he was not so far gone, but some timely medicines might recover him. I therefore proceeded to the proper queries, which, with the answers made to me, I shall set down in form of a dialogue, in the very words they were spoken, because I would not omit the least circumstance; in this narrative; and I call my conscience to witness, as if upon oath, that I shall tell the truth, without addition or diminution.

D. Pray, sir, how did you contract this swelling?

D. By a criticism.

D. A criticism! that's a distemper I never read of in Galen.

D. 'Sdeath, sir, a distemper! It is no distemper, but a noble art. I have sat fourteen hours a day at it: and are you a doctor, and don't know there's a communication between the legs and the brain?

D. What made you sit so many hours, sir?

D. Cato, sir. D.