SIX MONTHS IN THE WEST INDIES. REASONS FOR GOING ABROAD. THE doctors disagreed. According to four firstrate opinions, I groaned at one and the same time under rheumatism proper, rheumatic gout, gout proper, and an affection in the spinous process. The serious signs of one were the favorable symptoms of another, and the prescriptions of the first in direct oppugnancy to the principles of the last. To-day I was to drink water at Buxton, the morrow to drink water at Bath, on Wednesday I was to go to Italy, and on Thursday I had better stay at home. The fact was, the doctors could not make out my case. Reader, if by mischance thou art one of those unhappy persons whom the climate of our famous B mother England, in punishment of thy many sins in chattering French instead of thy kindly vernacular, in giving half-a-guinea to Italians instead of three shillings and sixpence to Britons, in cleaving to wine and eschewing beer, hath touched with her insular cramp in shoulders, elbows, wrists, fingers, back, loins, knees, ancles or toes...if such be the case, go not, I entreat thee for thy good, to any of the faculty, whether physician, surgeon, apothecary or druggist, licensed or unlicensed; save thy good coin, gentle rheumatic, in thy purse for better merchandize, and laissez aller les choses; torment not the creature with drenches and bandages, and peradventure it will ache thee some months the less for being entertained civilly; at all events thou wilt have economized so much money, escaped so much physic, and it will go harder with thee than with any body else, if thou get not well again every whit as soon. True it is, though I speak it to my shame, that I did, in the impatience of my heart, betake myself to medicine for relief. It was promised to me abundantly. I am ready to communicate to any earnest inquirer, twenty and five infallible prescriptions, every one of which has effected so many cures, that it is somewhat surprising that the combined action of all of them together has not, a long time |