338 A Biographical Sketch of Dr. Johnson
��Of the hundred sublunary things bestowed on mortals, health is ninety-nine. He was born with a scrophulous habit, for which he was touched, as he acknowledged, by good Queen Anne, whose piece of gold he carefully preserved *. But even a Stuart could not expel that enemy to his frame, by a touch. For it would have been even beyond the stroking power of Greatrix in all his glory, to charm it away 2 . Though he seemed to be athletic as Milo himself, and in his younger days performed several feats of activity, he was to the last a convulsionary 1 \ He has often stept aside, to let nature do what she would with him. His gestures, which were a degree of St. Vitus's daate, in the street, attracted the notice of many : the stare of the vulgar, but the compassion of the better sort. This writer has often looked another way, as the companions of Peter the Great were used to do, while he was under the short paroxysm 4 . He was perpetually taking opening medicines 5 . He could only keep his ailments from gaining ground. He thought he was worse for the agitation of active exercise 6 . He was afraid of his disorders seizing his head,
��1 ' She hung about his neck the usual amulet of an angel of gold, with the impress of St. Michael the archangel on one side and a ship under full sail on the other.' Haw kins, p. 4 ; ante. \. 133.
2 * Mr. Gretrakes is said to have cured pains and diseases only by touching; and the excellent Dr. H. More, who gives a particular account of him, attributes his great success to a certain sanative virtue in his hand ; and supposes it might be con ferred upon him as a distinguishing grace on account of the regenerate and confirmed state of piety which he seemed to be in.' Gentleman's Magazine, 1748, p. 449.
See Diet. Nat. Biog. under GREAT- RAKES, VALENTINE.
3 Convulsionary is not in John son's Dictionary. The only instance Dr. Murray gives of its use is as a translation of convulsionnaire ' one of a number of fanatics in France in
��the eighteenth century, who fell into convulsions and extravagances, sup posed to be accompanied by miracu lous cures/ &c. All that Tyers meant was that Johnson was subject to those * motions or tricks ' which Reynolds said were in his case ' im properly called convulsions.' Ante, ii. 222, 273.
4 ' The Czar while young, and even until his death, was subject to fre quent fits of a violent spasm of the brain. It was a kind of convulsion which threw him sometimes for whole hours into so dreadful a situation that he could not bear the presence of any person, not even of his best friends.' Original Anecdotes of Peter the Great, London, 1788, p. 109.
5 Letters, ii. 101.
6 Probably this wa only towards the close of his life when he was dis tressed with asthma. For his re commendation of exercise see Life, i. 446 ; iv. 150, n. 2 ; Letters, ii. 99.
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