studied the categories, and can chop logic by mode and figure --
Between friends, I think every man of tolerable parts ought, at
my time of day, to be both physician and lawyer, as far as his
own constitution and property are concerned. For my own part, I
have had an hospital these fourteen years within myself, and
studied my own case with the most painful attention; consequently
may be supposed to know something of the matter, although I have
not taken regular courses of physiology et cetera et cetera. --
In short, I have for some time been of opinion (no offence, dear
Doctor) that the sum of all your medical discoveries amounts to
this, that the more you study the less you know. -- I have read
all that has been written on the Hot Wells, and what I can
collect from the whole, is, that the water contains nothing but a
little salt, and calcarious earth, mixed in such inconsiderable
proportion, as can have very little, if any, effect on the animal
economy. This being the case, I think the man deserves to be
fitted with a cap and bells, who for such a paultry advantage as
this spring affords, sacrifices his precious time, which might be
employed in taking more effectual remedies, and exposes himself
to the dirt, the stench, the chilling blasts, and perpetual
rains, that render this place to me intolerable. If these waters,
from a small degree of astringency, are of some service in the
diabetes, diarrhoea, and night sweats, when the secretions are
too much increased, must not they do harm in the same proportion,
where the humours are obstructed, as in the asthma, scurvy, gout
and dropsy? -- Now we talk of the dropsy, here is a strange
fantastical oddity, one of your brethren, who harangues every day
in the Pump-room, as if he was hired to give lectures on all
subjects whatsoever -- I know not what to make of him --
Sometimes he makes shrewd remarks; at other times he talks like