distastes for this and that, and the strange fasts I am forced to keep,
digest my peccant humours, and nature, with those stones, voids whatever
there is in me superfluous and hurtful. Let them never tell me that it
is a medicine too dear bought: for what avail so many stinking draughts,
so many caustics, incisions, sweats, setons, diets, and so many other
methods of cure, which often, by reason we are not able to undergo their
violence and importunity, bring us to our graves? So that when I have
the stone, I look upon it as physic; when free from it, as an absolute
deliverance.

And here is another particular benefit of my disease; which is, that it
almost plays its game by itself, and lets 'me play mine, if I have only
courage to do it; for, in its greatest fury, I have endured it ten hours
together on horseback. Do but endure only; you need no other regimen
play, run, dine, do this and t'other, if you can; your debauch will do
you more good than harm; say as much to one that has the pox, the gout,
or hernia! The other diseases have more universal obligations; rack our
actions after another kind of manner, disturb our whole order, and to
their consideration engage the whole state of life: this only pinches the
skin; it leaves the understanding and the will wholly at our own
disposal, and the tongue, the hands, and the feet; it rather awakens than
stupefies you. The soul is struck with the ardour of a fever,
overwhelmed with an epilepsy, and displaced by a sharp megrim, and, in
short, astounded by all the diseases that hurt the whole mass and the
most noble parts; this never meddles with the soul; if anything goes
amiss with her, 'tis her own fault; she betrays, dismounts, and abandons
herself. There are none but fools who suffer themselves to be persuaded
that this hard and massive body which is baked in our kidneys is to be
dissolved by drinks; wherefore, when it is once stirred, there is nothing
to be done but to give it passage; and, for that matter, it will itself