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N° 25

Thursday, March 29.

-Egrefcitque medendo.

VIRG. Æn. xii. 46.

And fickens by the very means of health.

THE following letter will explain itself, and needs no apology.

SIR,

I AM one of that fickly tribe who are commonly known by the name of Valetudinarians; and do • confefs to you, that I first contracted this ill habit of body, or rather of mind, by the study of phyfic. I no • fooner began to peruse books of this nature, but I * found my pulse was irregular; and fearce ever read the account of any disease that I did not fancy myself afflicted with. Doctor Sydenham's learned Treatife of * Fevers threw me into a lingering hectic, which hung upon me all the while I was reading that excellent piece. I then applied myself to the study of feveral authors, who have written upon phthifical diftempers, * and by that means fell into a confumption; till at length, growing very fat, I was in a manner shamed out of that imagination. Not long after this I found • in myself all the symptoms of the gout, except pain; • but was cured of it by a Treatise upon the Gravel, • written by a very ingenious author, who (as it is usual * for physicians to convert one distemper into another) • eased me of the gout by giving me the ftone. I at • length ftudied myself into a complication of distempers; ⚫ but accidentally taking into my hand that ingenious • difcourse written by Sanctorius, I was refolved to direct myfelf by a scheme of rules, which I had collected from his observations. The learned world are very well acquainted with that gentleman's invention; • who,

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who, for the better carrying on of his experiments, contrived a certain mathematical chair, which was fo

artificially hung upon springs, that it would weigh any thing as well as a pair of fcales. By this means he difcovered how many ounces of his food pafs'd by perfpiration, what quantity of it was turned into nou. rishment, and how much went away by the other chan nels and distributions of nature.

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Having provided myself with this chair, I used to study, eat, drink, and fleep in it; infomuch that I may 'be faid, for these three last years, to have lived in a pair of fcales. I compute myself, when I am in full health, to be precifely two hundred weight, falling ' short of it about a pound after a day's fast, and exceeding it as much after a very full meal; fo that it is my continual employment to trim the balance between ⚫ these two volatile pounds in my constitution. In my ordinary meals I fetch myself up to two hundred weight ⚫ and half a pound; and if after having dined I find my' felf fall short of it, I drink just so much small-beer, or • eat fuch a quantity of bread, as is fufficient to make me weight. In my greatest excesses I do not tranfgrefs more than the other half pound; which, for my ' health's fake, I do the first Monday in every month. • As foon as I find myself duly poised after dinner, I • walk till I have perspired five ounces and four fcruples, • and when I discover, by my chair, that I am fo far re'duced, I fall to my books, and study away three ounces ' more. As for the remaining parts of the pound, I keep

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no account of them. I do not dine and fup by the 'clock, but by my chair; for when that informs me my pound of food is exhausted, I conclude myself to be hungry, and lay in another with all diligence. In my ⚫ days of abstinence I lose a pound and an half, and on • folemn fafts am two pounds lighter than on other days ' in the year.

• I allow myself, one night with another, a quarter of a pound of fleep within a few grains more or less; and if upon my rifing I find that I have not confumed my whole quantity, I take out the rest in my chair. • Upon an exact calculation of what I expended and

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received the last year, which I always register in a

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' book,

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book, I find the medium to be two hundred weight, fo 'that I cannot difcover that I am impaired one ounce in

my health during a whole twelvemonth. And yet, Sir, notwithstanding this my great care to ballaft myfelf equally every day, and to keep my body in its proper poife, fo it is that I find myself in a fick and languifhing condition. My complexion is grown very fallow, my pulse low, and my body hydropical. Let me therefore beg you, Sir, to confider me as your patient, and to give me more certain rules to walk by than those I have already observed, and you will very much oblige

* Your humble fervant,'

This letter puts me in mind of an Iralian epitaph written on the monument of a Valetudinarian;

"Stavo

ben, ma per star Meglio, sto qui:" which it is impof fible to tranflate. The fear of death often proves mortal, and fets people on methods to fave their lives, which infallibly destroy them. This is a reflection made by fome hiftorians, upon observing that there are many more thoufands killed in a flight than in a battle; and may be applied to those multitudes of imaginary fick perfons that break their conftitutions by phyfic, and throw themfelves into the arms of death, by endeavouring to escape it. This method is not only dangerous, but below the practice of a reafonable creature. To confult the prefervation of life, as the only end of it, to make our health our business, to engage in no action that is not part of a regimen, or course of phyfic; are purposes so abject, fo mean, fo unworthy human nature, that a generous foul would rather die than submit to them. Befides, that a continual anxiety for life vitiates all the relishes of it, and casts a gloom over the whole face of nature; as it is impoffible we should take delight in any thing that we are every moment afraid of lofing.

I do not mean, by what I have here said, that I think any one to blame for taking due care of their health. On the contrary, as chearfulness of mind, and capacity for business, are in a great measure the effects of a well-temper'd conftitution, a man cannot be at too much pains to cultivate and preferve it. But this care, which

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we are prompted to, not only by common sense, but by duty and instinct, should never engage us in groundleis fears, melancholy apprehenfions, and imaginary distempers, which are natural to every man who is more anxious to live than how to live. In short, the prefervation of life should be only a fecondary concern, and the direction of it our principal. If we have this frame of mind, we shall take the best means to preferve life, without being over folicitous about the event; and shall arrive at that point of felicity which Martial has mentioned as the perfection of happiness, of neither fearing nor wishing for death.

In anfwer to the gentleman, who tempers his health by ounces and by fcrupes, and, inftead of complying with those natural folicitations of hunger and thirst, drowsiness or love of exercise, governs himself by the prescriptions of his chair, I shall tell him a short fable. Jupiter, says the Mythologist, to reward the piety of a certain countryman, promifed to give him whatever he would afk: the countryman defired that he might have the management of the weather in his own estate: he obtained his request, and immediately distributed rain, fnow, and funshine among his feveral fields, as he thought the nature of the foil required. At the end of the year, when he expected to fee a more than ordi nary crop, his harvest tell infinitely short of that of his neighbours; upon which, fays the fable, he defired Jupiter to take the weather again into his own hands, or that otherwise he should utterly ruin himself.

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N° 26

Friday, March 30.

Pallida mors æquo pulfat pede pauperum tabernas
Regumque turres. O beate Sefti,

Vitæ fumma brevis fpem nos vetat inchoare longam.
Jam te premet nox, fabulæque manes,

Et domus exilis Plutonia

HOR. Od. I. iv. 13.

With equal foot, rich friend, impartial fate
Knocks at the cottage, and the palace gate:
Life's span forbids thee to extend thy cares,
And stretch thy hopes beyond thy years:
Night foon will feize, and you must quickly go
To story'd ghosts, and Pluto's house below.

CREECH.

no

HEN I am in a W ferious humour, I very often walk by myself in Westminster-Abbey; where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the folemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not difagreeable. I yesterday pasled a whole afternoon in the church-yard, the cloifters, and the church, amusing myself with the tomb-ftones and infcriptions that I met with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded thing elfe of the buried person, but that he was born upon one day, and died upon another: the whole history of his life being comprehended in those two circumitances, that are common to all mankind. I could not but look upon these registers of existence, whether of brass or marble, as a kind of fatire upon the departed perfons; who had left no other memorial of them, but that they were born and that they died. They put me in mind of feveral perfons mentioned in the battles of heroic poems,

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