“THE two great causes, which conspire with each other to shorten life,
says lord _Verulam_, are first——
“The internal spirit, which like a gentle flame wastes the body down to
death:—And secondly, the external air, that parches the body up to
ashes:—which two enemies attacking us on both sides of our bodies
together, at length destroy our organs, and render them unfit to carry
on the functions of life.”
This being the state of the case, the road to longevity was plain;
nothing more being required, says his lordship, but to repair the waste
committed by the internal spirit, by making the substance of it more
thick and dense, by a regular course of opiates on one side, and by
refrigerating the heat of it on the other, by three grains and a half
of salt-petre every morning before you got up.——
Still this frame of ours was left exposed to the inimical assaults of
the air without;—but this was fenced off again by a course of greasy
unctions, which so fully saturated the pores of the skin, that no
spicula could enter;——nor could any one get out.——This put a stop to
all perspiration, sensible and insensible, which being the cause of so
many scurvy distempers—a course of clysters was requisite to carry off
redundant humours,—and render the system complete.
What my father had to say to my lord of _Verulam_’s opiates, his
salt-petre, and greasy unctions and clysters, you shall read,—but not
to-day—or to-morrow: time presses upon me,—my reader is impatient—I
must get forwards——You shall read the chapter at your leisure (if you
chuse it), as soon as ever the _Tristra-pædia_ is published.——
Sufficeth it, at present to say, my father levelled the hypothesis with
the ground, and in doing that, the learned know, he built up and
established his own.——