from hands and feets extremitys
th' impetuous ichor flyes;
a furious spirit thro' every vein
rushes with unrelentive pain.
whilst every member, as it comes,
th' encaustic pestilence consumes.
as the rock Ætna's furnace burns,
and marble into pumice turns;
so by thy chymystry we find
our bones and joints to chalk calcin'd
or knotty made and motionless.
O who can thy dire ills express!
We need not spend time in repeating the great variety of opinions and different hypotheses in Authors about the formal cause of the gout. I see no reason to change any part of the theory of this distemper, which I advanced in my letter, touching the matter that causes it, and the seat of it, which I asserted to be the oyl-glands about the joints and tendons. It seems very plain, that 'tis deriv'd from the salts which abound in all our meats and drinks. 'Tis those which give our flesh, fish, their flavor; our wine, beer, their stength. And they that live well, have a good claim to the distemper; Helmont calls it morbus suaviter viventium; Homer long ago observed this, calling it Μισοπζωχος, it flys cottages and seeks the habitations of the idle and luxurious. There it reigns, L
