LETTER XLVI.
London, May 10, 1712.
I HAVE not yet ease or humour enough to go on in my journal method, though I have left my chamber these ten days. My pain continues still in my shoulder and collar: I keep flannel on it, and rub it with brandy, and take a nasty diet-drink. I still itch terribly, and have some few pimples: I am weak, and sweat; and then the flannel makes me mad with itching; but I think my pain lessens. A journal, while I was sick, would have been a noble thing, made up of pain and physick, visits, and messages; the two last were almost as troublesome as the two first. One good circumstance is, that I am grown much leaner. I believe I told you, that I have taken in my breeches two inches. I had your N. 29 last night. In answer to your good opinion of my disease, the doctors said they never saw any thing so odd of the kind; they were not properly shingles, but herpes miliaris, and twenty other hard names. I can never be sick like other people, but always something out of the common way; and as for your notion of its coming without pain, it neither came, nor staid, nor went, without pain, and the most pain I ever bore in my life. Medemeris is retired in the country, with the beast her husband, long ago. I thank the bishop of Clogher for his proxy; I will write to him soon. Here is Dilly's wife in town; but I have not seen her yet. No, simpleton: it is not a sign of health, but a sign, that if it had not come out, some terrible fit of sickness would
have
