eem the more pleasant to me, after a sickness so near and so
contiguous, that I can distinguish them in the presence of one another,
in their greatest show; when they appear in emulation, as if to make head
against and dispute it with one another! As the Stoics say that vices
are profitably introduced to give value to and to set off virtue, we can,
with better reason and less temerity of conjecture, say that nature has
given us pain for the honour and service of pleasure and indolence. When
Socrates, after his fetters were knocked off, felt the pleasure of that
itching which the weight of them had caused in his legs, he rejoiced to
consider the strict alliance betwixt pain and pleasure; how they are
linked together by a necessary connection, so that by turns they follow
and mutually beget one another; and cried out to good AEsop, that he
ought out of this consideration to have taken matter for a fine fable.

The worst that I see in other diseases is, that they are not so grievous
in their effect as they are in their issue: a man is a whole year in
recovering, and all the while full of weakness and fear. There is so
much hazard, and so many steps to arrive at safety, that there is no end
on't before they have unmuffled you of a kerchief, and then of a cap,
before they allow you to walk abroad and take the air, to drink wine, to
lie with your wife, to eat melons, 'tis odds you relapse into some new
distemper. The stone has this privilege, that it carries itself clean
off: whereas the other maladies always leave behind them some impression
and alteration that render the body subject to a new disease, and lend a
hand to one another. Those are excusable that content themselves with
possessing us, without extending farther and introducing their followers;
but courteous and kind are those whose passage brings us any profitable
issue. Since I have been troubled with the stone, I find myself freed
from all other accidents, much more, methinks, than I was before, and
have never had any fever since; I argue that the extreme and frequent
vomitings that I am subject to purge me: and, on the other hand, my
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, se