sort of weapons: she forms and fashions me by use, hardens and habituates
me, so that I can know within a little for how much I shall be quit. For
want of natural memory, I make one of paper; and as any new symptom
happens in my disease, I set it down, whence it falls out that, having
now almost passed through all sorts of examples, if anything striking
threatens me, turning over these little loose notes, as the Sybilline
leaves, I never fail of finding matter of consolation from some
favourable prognostic in my past experience. Custom also makes me hope
better for the time to come; for, the conduct of this clearing out having
so long continued, 'tis to be believed that nature will not alter her
course, and that no other worse accident will happen than what I already
feel. And besides, the condition of this disease is not unsuitable to my
prompt and sudden complexion: when it assaults me gently, I am afraid,
for 'tis then for a great while; but it has, naturally, brisk and
vigorous excesses; it claws me to purpose for a day or two. My kidneys
held out an age without alteration; and I have almost now lived another,
since they changed their state; evils have their periods, as well as
benefits: peradventure, the infirmity draws towards an end. Age weakens
the heat of my stomach, and, its digestion being less perfect, sends this
crude matter to my kidneys; why, at a certain revolution, may not the
heat of my kidneys be also abated, so that they can no more petrify my
phlegm, and nature find out some other way of purgation. Years have
evidently helped me to drain certain rheums; and why not these excrements
which furnish matter for gravel? But is there anything delightful in
comparison of this sudden change, when from an excessive pain, I come, by
the voiding of a stone, to recover, as by a flash of lightning, the
beautiful light of health, so free and full, as it happens in our sudden
and sharpest colics? Is there anything in the pain suffered, that one
can counterpoise to the pleasure of so sudden an amendment? Oh, how much
does health seem the more pleasant to me, after a sickness so near and so