the authors I could meet with, whilst I practis'd in the Metropolis. A large volume I wrote, being an intire history of the distemper, and the practise upon it, from the beginning to our own times; and much sollicited have I been by friends and fellow-sufferers to publish it. But I was too senlible the principal part, the crown-work was wanting, the Cure. Without that, 'tis vain to harangue the world with the formal and formidable pomp of ætiologics, pathognomonics, procatarctics, prognostics: to define, distinguish with subtilty, to ransack nature's recesses, to be elaborate in historys of cases, all the while the poor podagric suffers on. Nor has the distempter lost an inch of ground from Hippocrates's days even to our own. The gout the supreme tyrant still gives sentence as in Lucian 1500 years ago.
Εγω δε τουτοις πασιν οιμαζειν λεγω
I command them all still to roar on.
In this deplorable state of things, where I myself made an unhappy part, from a paternal labes, my thoughts were intent upon the distemper. I was always watchful of relief: I ever had the strongest persuasion in my mind that I should live to see that great discovery. For which reason I thankfully received the great blessing which
