man touches the
matter of gout: "For years a man has feasted; has omitted his usual
exercises; has grown slow and sluggish; has been overstudious or
overanxious, etc." Then he reasons about "smothering the animal spirits,
which are the primary instruments of concoction," and so on, but at last
he says, "We must look beyond medicines. Wise men do this in gout and in
all other chronic diseases." And what does he advise? Here is the
substance of what he says. A gouty man must be moderate, not too
abstinent, so as to get weak. One meat is best; mixtures are bad. A milk
diet "has prevailed," only bread being added, but it must be rigid and
has its risks. He seems to have kept a nobleman on milk a year. Also
there must be total abstinence from wine and all fermented liquors.
Early bed hours and early rising are for the gouty. Then there come wise
words as to worry and overwork. But, above all, the gouty must ride on
horseback and exercise afoot. As to the wilder passions of men, he makes
this strangely interesting remark, "All such the old man should avoid,
for," he says, "by their indulgence he thus denies himself the privilege
of enjoying that jubilee which by the special and kind gift of nature is
conceded to old men: of whom it is the natural and happy lot to be
emancipated from the control of those lusts which during youth attacked
them."

This is a fair specimen of a master at his best. I would rather have
trusted Sydenham, with all his queer theories, than many a man with the
ampler resources of to-day; for his century may aid but does not make
the true physician, who is not the slave, but the master, of opinions.

To enforce again the fact that the greater men of my art, even in days
of the most extreme theories, were more sensible in their daily practice
than in their dogmatic statements, I would like to quote a letter of
Rush, which for several reasons is interesting and valuable. No man was
more positive in his beliefs and in the assertion of them than he. His
name is still associated with bleeding and purging, and if we considered
only some of his written assertions, made with the violence which
opposition always aroused in his positive nature, we should pause in
wonder at his great reputation. But what a man says or writes, and what
he does, are often far apart. We are apt to take his most decisive
statements as representative, and thus may seriously err. I have known a
number of men who were really trustworthy