subtle aura of the gout in a patient, would sometimes fly up from the great toe to the brain, and cause an epileptical fitt. Whereupon they ty'd the joint, and hinder'd its ascent to the head: and by caustics, scarifications and the like, upon the part, they so lett it out or alter'd the texture of it, that they made a cure.
A man cannot without horror think upon this diery pest got into his veins, preying upon his carcase alive, freely ravaging every limb like a conquer'd and triumph'd province. They that have felt it, know the pain. But how is the prodigious evil doubled, when we know no remedy? The great Agippa Augustus's friend, his General, his admiral, his son-in-law, the second man in the empire, wife, valiant, fortunate, under the agonys of the gout, chose rather to want the sense of feeling, than to feel such torment; and by the advice of one of his physicians, put his legs into hot vineager, which destroy'd his nerves and kill'd him. Pliny, nat. hist. ccxxxi.
Varro relates that Servius Caludius a Roman knight, constrained by the greatness of the pain, anointed his legs with poyfon and thereby depriv'd 'em of all sense. Pliny, xxv. 3.
How many great men do we dayly read of languishing out their lives under the
hopeless
