Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	several_a	time_n	write_v	2,479	5	5.4901	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A64315	Miscellanea ... by a person of honour.	Temple, William, Sir, 1628-1699.	1680 (1680)	Wing T646; ESTC R223440	87,470	252

of pain I was content to see company Every body that came to visit me found something to say upon the occasion some made a jest of it or a little reproach others were serious in their mirth and made me Compliments as upon a happy accident and sign of long life The Spaniards askt me Albricias for telling me the news that I might be sure 't was the Gout and in short none of the company was in ill humour but I who had rather by half have had a Fever or a worse disease at that time where the danger might have been greater but the trouble and the melancholly would I am sure have been less Though I had never feared the Gout yet I had always scorned it as an effect commonly of intemperance and hated it as that I thought made men unfit for any thing after they were once deep engaged in it Besides I was prest in my journey at that time to Nimmeguen by His Majesties Commands to assist at the Treaty there Most of the Ambassadors from the several parts of Christendom were upon their way One of my Colleagues was already upon the place and I had promised immediately to follow for by our Commission we were to be two to act in that Mediation and to help at this pinch I had always heard that a Fit of the Gout used to have six weeks at the least for its ordinary period With these comforts about me and sullenness enough to use no Remedy of a hundred that were told me Monsieur Zulichem came to see me among the rest of my Friends who I think never came into company without saying something that was new and so he did upon my occasion For talking of my illness and approving of my obstinacy against all the common prescriptions he asked me whether I had never heard the Indian way of Curing the Gout by Moxa I told him no and asked him what it was He said it was a certain kind of Moss that grew in the East-Indies that their way was when ever any body fell into a Fit of the Gout to take a small quantity of it and form it into a figure broad at bottom as a two-pence and pointed at top To set the bottom exactly upon the place where the violence of the pain was fixed then with a small round perfumed Match made likewise in the Indies to give fire to the top of the Moss which burning down by degrees came at length to the skin and burnt it till the Moss was consumed to ashes That many times the first burning would remove the pain if not it was to be renewed a second third and fourth time till it went away and till the person found he could set his foot boldly to the ground and walk I desired him to tell me how he had come acquainted with this new Operation He said by the Relation of several who had seen and tryed it in the Indies but particularly by an ingenious little Book written of it by a Dutch Minister at Batavia who being extremely tormented with a Fit of the Gout an old Indian-woman coming to see him undertook to Cure him and did it immediately by this Moxa and after many experiments of it there had written this Treatise of it in Dutch for the use of his Countreymen and sent over a quantity of the Moss and Matches to his Son at Utrecht to be sold if any would be perswaded to use them That though he could not say whether experiment had been made of it here yet the Book was worth reading and for his part He thought He should try it if ever he should fall into that Disease I desired the Book which He promised to send me next morning and this discourse of Monsieur Zulichem busied my head all night I hated the very name of the Gout and thought it a reproach and for the good sign people called it I could not find that mended an ill thing nor could I like any sign of living long in weakness or in pain I deplored the loss of my legs and confinement to my Chamber at an age that left me little pleasure but of walking and of air but the worst circumstance of all was the sentence past upon it of being without Cure I had past Twenty years of my life and several accidents of danger in my health without any use of Physicians and from some experiments of my own as well as much reading and thought upon that subject had reasoned my self into an opinion that the use of them and their methods unless in some sudden and acute disease was it self a very great venture and that their greatest practisers practised least upon themselves or their friends I had ever quarrelled with their studying art more than nature and applying themselves to methods rather than to remedies whereas the knowledg of the last is all that nine parts in ten of the world have trusted to in all ages But for the common Remedies of the Gout I found exceptions to them all the time of Purging was past with me which otherwise I should certainly have tryed upon the authority of the great Hypocrates who says it should be done upon the first motion of the humour in the Gout For Poultives I knew they allayed pain but withall that they drew down the humours and suppled the parts thereby making the passages wider and apter to receive them in greater quantity and I had often heard it concluded that the use of them ended in losing that of ones limbs by weakening the joint upon every fit For Plaisters that had any effect I thought it must be by dispersing or repelling the humours which could not be done without endangering perhaps some other disease of the bowels the stomack or the head Rest and warmth either of clothes or bathings I doubted would in a degree have the effects of Poultives and Sweating was proper for prevention rather than remedy So that all I could end in with any satisfaction was patience and abstinence and though I easily resolved of the last yet the first was hard to be found in the circumstances of my business as well as of my health All this made me rave upon Monsieur Zulichem's new operation and for the way of curing by fire I found twenty things to give me an opinion of it I remembred what I had read of the Egyptians of old who used it in most diseases and what I had often heard of that practice still continuing among the Moors of Africk so that a slave is seldom taken as both Spaniards and Portugueses affirm who has not many scars of the hot iron upon his body which they use upon most distempers but especially those of the head and consequently in Physick as well as in Surgery In the time of the Yncas reign in Peru which I take to have been one of the greatest Constitutions of Absolute Monarchy that has been in the world no composition was allowed by the Laws to be used in point of

Medicine but only Simples proper to each Disease Burning was much in use either by natural or artificial fires particularly for all ilnesses of teeth and soreness or swelling of the gums which they were subject to from their nearness to the Sea they had an herb which never failed of curing it and being laid to the gums burnt away all the flesh that was swelled or corrupted and made way for new that came again as sound as that of a Child I remembred to have had my self in my youth one cruel wound cured by scalding Medicaments after it was grown so putrified as to have in the Surgeons opinion endangered the bone and the violent swelling and bruise of another taken away as soon as I received it by scalding it with Milk I remembred the cure of Chilblanes when I was a boy which may be called the Childrens Gout by burning at the fire or else by scalding brine that has I suppose the same effect I had heard of curing the stings of Adders and bites of mad Dogs by immediately burning the part with a hot iron and of some strange cures of Frenzies by casual applications of fire to the lower parts which seems reasonable enough by the violent revulsion it may make of humours from the head and agrees with the opinions and practice I mentioned before of Egypt and Africa Perhaps blistering in the neck and hot Pidgeons may be in use among us upon the same grounds and in our Methods of Surgery nothing is found of such effect in the case of old Ulcers as fire which is certainly the greatest drawer and dryer and thereby the greatest cleanser that can be found I knew very well that in Diseases of Cattel there is nothing more commonly used nor with greater success and concluded it was but a tenderness to Mankind that made it less in use amongst us and which had introduced Corrosives and Causticks to supply the place of it which are indeed but artificial fires I mention all these reflections to show that the experiment I resolved to make was upon thought and not rashness or impatience as those called it that would have dissuaded me from it but the chief reason was that I liked no other because I knew they failed every day and left men in despair of being ever well cured of the Gout Next morning I lookt over the Book which Monsieur Zulichem had promised me written by the Minister at Batavia I pretended not to judg of the Indian Philosophy or reasonings upon the cause of the Gout but yet thought them as probable as those of Physicians here and liked them so much the better because it seems their opinion in the point is general among them as well as their method of curing whereas the differences among ours are almost as many in both as there are Physicians that reason upon the causes or practise upon the cure of that disease They hold that the cause of the Gout is a malignant vapour that falls upon the joynt between the bone and the skin that covers it which being the most sensible of all parts of the body causes the violence of the pain That the swelling is no part of the disease but only an effect of it and of a kindness in nature that to relieve the part affected calls down humours to damp the malignity of the vapour and thereby assuage the sharpness of the pain which seldom fails whenever the part grows very much swelled That consequently the swellings and returns of the Gout are chiefly occasioned by the ill methods of curing it at first That this vapour falling upon joints which have not motion and thereby heat enough to dispel it cannot be cured otherwise than by burning by which it immediately evaporates and that this is evident by the present ceasing of the pain upon the second third or fourth application of the Moxa which are performed in a few minutes time And the Author affirms it happens often there that upon the last burning an extreme stench comes out of the skin where the fire had opened it Whatever the reasonings were which yet seemed ingenious enough the experiments alledged with so much confidence and to be so generally in those parts and told by an Author that writ like a plain man and one whose profession was to tell truth helped me to resolve upon making the trial I was confirmed in this resolution by a German Physician Doctor Theodore Coleby who was then in my Family a sober and intelligent man whom I dispatched immediately to Vtrecht to bring me some of the Moxa and learn the exact method of using it from the man that sold it who was Son to the Minister of Batavia He returned with all that belonged to this Cure having performed the whole operation upon his hand by the mans direction I immediately made the experiment in the manner before related setting the Moxa just upon the place where the first violence of my pain began which was the joint of the great toe and where the greatest anger and soreness still continued notwithstanding the swelling of my foot so that I had never yet in five days been able to stir it but as it was lifted Upon the first burning I found the skin shrink all round the place and whether the greater pain of the fire had taken away the sense of a smaller or no I could not tell but I thought it less than it was I burnt it the second time and upon it observed the skin about it to shrink and the swelling to flat yet more than at first I began to move my toe which I had not done before but I found some remainders of pain I burnt it the third time and observed still the same effects without but a much greater within for I stirred the joynt several times at ease and growing bolder I set my foot to the ground without any pain at all After this I pursued the method prescribed by the Book and the Authors Son at Vtrecht and had a bruised Clove of Garlick laid to the place that was burnt and covered with a large Plaister of Diapalma to keep it fixed there and when this was done feeling no more pain and treading still bolder and firmer upon it I cut a slipper to let in my foot swelled as it was and walkt half a dozen turns about the room without any pain or trouble and much to the surprize of those that were about me as well as to my own For though I had reasoned my self before-hand into an opinion of the thing yet I could not expect such an effect as I found which seldom reaches to the degree that is promised by the prescribers of any remedies whereas this went beyond it having been applied so late and the prescription reaching only to the first attaque of the pain and before the part begins to swell For the pain of the burning it self the first time it is sharp so that a man may be allowed to complain I resolved I