straitness of the
breast, pains and flatulencies in the bowels, and an unaptness to
discharge their contents.

The pulse becomes low, weak, and unequal; and there are frequent
palpitations of the heart, a little dark-coloured urine is voided at
some times; and a flood of colourless and insipid at others; relieving
for a moment, but increasing the distemper: there is in some cases also
a continual teazing cough, with a choaking stoppage in the throat at
times; then heartburn, sickness, hardness of the belly, and a costive
habit, or a tormenting and vain irritation.

The lips turn pale, the eyes loose their brightness and by degrees the
white grows as it were greenish, the gums want their due firmness, with
their proper colour; and an unpleasing foulness grows upon the teeth:
the inside of the mouth is pale and furred, and the throat dry and
husky: the colour of the skin is pale (though there are periods when the
face is florid) and as the obstruction gathers ground, and more affects
the liver, the whole body becomes yellow, tawny, greenish, and at length
of that deep and dusky hue, to which men of swift imagination have given
the name of blackness.

These symptoms do not all appear in any one period of the disease, or in
one case, but at one time or other all of them, as well as those which
follow: the flesh becomes cold to the touch, though the patient does not
himself perceive it; the limbs grow numbed and torpid, the breathing
dull and slow, and the voice hollow; and usually the appetite in this
period declines, and comes almost to nothing: night sweats come on,
black swellings appear on the veins, the flesh wastes and the breast
becomes flat and hollow: the mouth is full of a thin spittle, the head
is dizzy and confus'd, and sometimes there is an unconquerable numbness
in the organs of speech.

I have known the temporary silence that follows upon this last symptom
become a jest to the common herd; and the unhappy patient, instead of
compassion and assistance, receive the reproof of sullenness, from those
who should have known and acted better.

About twenty years ago I met on a visit at Catthorpe in Leicestershire a
young gentleman of distinguished learning and abilities, who at certain
times was speechless. The vulgar thought it a pretence: and a jocose
lady, where he was at tea with company, putting him as she said to a
trial, poured out a dish very strong and without sugar. He drank it and
returned the cup w