[_Dated at midnight, 22 October,1780._]
_Franklin._ Eh! Oh! Eh! What have I done to merit these cruel
sufferings?
_Gout._ Many things; you have ate and drank too freely, and too much
indulged those legs of yours in their indolence.
_Franklin._ Who is it that accuses me?
_Gout._ It is I, even I, the Gout.
_Franklin._ What! my enemy in person?
_Gout._ No, not your enemy.
_Franklin._ I repeat it; my enemy; for you would not only torment my
body to death, but ruin my good name; you reproach me as a glutton
and a tippler; now all the world that knows me will allow that I am
neither the one nor the other.
_Gout._ The world may think as it pleases; it is always very
complaisant to itself, and sometimes to its friends; but I very well
know that the quantity of meat and drink proper for a man who takes a
reasonable degree of exercise, would be too much for another, who
never takes any.
_Franklin._ I take--Eh! Oh!--as much exercise--Eh!--as I can, Madam
Gout. You know my sedentary state, and on that account, it would seem,
Madam Gout, as if you might spare me a little, seeing it is not
altogether my own fault.
_Gout._ Not a jot; your rhetoric and your politeness are thrown away;
your apology avails nothing. If your situation in life is a sedentary
one, your amusements, your recreations, at least, should be active.
You ought to walk or ride; or, if the weather prevents that, play at
billiards. But let us examine your course of life. While the mornings
are long, and you have leisure to go abroad, what do you do? Why,
instead of gaining an appetite for breakfast, by salutary exercise,
you amuse yourself with books, pamphlets, or newspapers, which
commonly are not worth the reading. Yet you eat an inordinate
breakfast, four dishes of tea, with cream, and one or two buttered
toasts, with slices of hung beef, which I fancy are not things the
most easily digested. Immediately afterward you sit down to write at
your desk, or converse with persons who apply to you on business. Thus
the time passes till one, without any kind of bodily exercise.
But all this I could pardon, in regard, as you say, to your sedentary
condition. But what is your practise after dinner? Walking in the
beautiful gardens of those friends with whom you have dined would be
the choice of men of sense; yours is to be fixt down to chess, where
you are found engaged for two or three hours! This is your perpetual
recreation, which is the least eligible of any for a sedentary man,
because, instead of accelerating the motion of the fluids, the rigid
attention it requires helps to retard the circulation and obstruct
internal secretions. Wrapt in the speculations of this wretched game,
you destroy your constitution. What can be expected from such a course
of living but a body replete with stagnant humors, ready to fall a
prey to all kinds of dangerous maladies, if I, the Gout, did not
occasionally bring you relief by agitating those humors, and so
purifying or dissipating them? If it was in some nook or alley in
Paris, deprived of walks, that you played awhile at chess after
dinner, this might be excusable; but the same taste prevails with you
in Passy, Auteuil, Montmartre, or Sanoy, places where there are the
finest gardens and walks, a pure air, beautiful women, and most
agreeable and instructive conversation; all which you might enjoy by
frequenting the walks. But these are rejected for this abominable game
of chess. Fie, then, Mr. Franklin! But amidst my instructions, I had
almost forgot to administer my wholesome corrections; so take that
twinge--and that.
_Franklin._ Oh! Eh! Oh! Ohhh! As much instruction as you please, Madam
Gout, and as many reproaches; but pray, Madam, a truce with your
corrections!
_Gout._ No, Sir, no--I will not abate a particle of what is so much
for your good--therefore--
_Franklin._ Oh! Ehhh!--It is not fair to say I take no exercise, when
I do very often, going out to dine and returning in my carriage.
_Gout._ That, of all imaginable exercises, is the most slight and
insignificant, if you allude to the motion of a carriage suspended on
springs. By observing the degree of heat obtained by different kinds
of motion we may form an estimate of the quantity of exercise given by
each. Thus, for example, if you turn out to walk in winter with cold
feet, in an hour's time you will be in a glow all over; ride on
horseback, the same effect will scarcely be perceived by four hours'
round trotting; but if you loll in a carriage, such as you have
mentioned, you may travel all day, and gladly enter the last inn to
warm your feet by a fire. Flatter yourself then no longer that half an
hour's airing in your carriage deserves the name of exercise.
Providence has appointed few to roll in carriages, while he has given
to all a pair of legs, which are machines infinitely more commodious
and serviceable. Be grateful, then, and make a proper use of yours.
Would you know how they forward the circulation of your fluids, in the
very action of transporting you from place to place; observe when you
walk that all your weight is alternately thrown from one leg to the
other; this occasions a great pressure on the vessels of the foot, and
repels their contents; when relieved, by the weight being thrown on
the other foot, the vessels of the first are allowed to replenish,
and, by a return of this weight, this repulsion again succeeds, thus
accelerating the circulation of the blood. The heat produced in any
given time depends on the degree of this acceleration; the fluids are
shaken, the humors attenuated, the secretions facilitated, and all
goes well; the cheeks are ruddy, and health is established. Behold
your fair friend at Auteuil;[24] a lady who received from bounteous
nature more really useful science than half a dozen of such pretenders
to philosophy as you have been able to extract from all your books.
When she honors you with a visit, it is on foot. She walks all hours
of the day, and leaves indolence, and its concomitant maladies, to be
endured by her horses. In this see at once the preservative of her
health and personal charms. But when you go to Auteuil, you must have
your carriage, tho it is no farther from Passy to Auteuil than from
Auteuil to Passy.
[Footnote 24: The reference is to Madame Helvetius, whom Franklin knew
as the widow of the writer Claude Adrien Helvetius. Her home was long
a center of literary society in France. The friendship with Franklin
was a notable incident in his career as American Ambassador to France.
See his letter to her printed here as the sixth of these selections
from Franklin.]
_Franklin._ Your reasonings grow very tiresome.
_Gout._ I stand corrected. I will be silent and continue my office;
take that, and that.
_Franklin._ Oh! Ohh! Talk on, I pray you.
_Gout._ No, no; I have a good number of twinges for you to-night, and
you may be sure of some more to-morrow.
_Franklin._ What, with such a fever! I shall go distracted. Oh! Eh!
Can no one bear it for me?
_Gout._ Ask that of your horses; they have served you faithfully.
_Franklin._ How can you so cruelly sport with my torments?
_Gout._ Sport! I am very serious. I have here a list of offenses
against your own health distinctly written, and can justify every
stroke inflicted on you.
_Franklin._ Read it then.
_Gout._ It is too long a detail; but I will briefly mention some
particulars.
_Franklin._ Proceed. I am all attention.
_Gout._ Do you remember how often you have promised yourself, the
following morning, a walk in the grove of Boulogne, in the garden de
la Muette, or in your own garden, and have violated your promise,
alleging at one time it was too cold, at another too warm, too windy,
too moist, or what else you pleased; when in truth it was too nothing
but your insuperable love of ease?
_Franklin._ That I confess may have happened occasionally, probably
ten times in a year.
_Gout._ Your confession is very far short of the truth; the gross
amount is one hundred and ninety-nine times.
_Franklin._ Is it possible?
_Gout._ So possible that it is fact; you may rely on the accuracy of
my statement. You know Mr. Brillon's gardens, and what fine walks they
contain; you know the handsome flight of a hundred steps, which lead
from the terrace above to the lawn below. You have been in the
practise of visiting this amiable family twice a week, after dinner,
and it is a maxim of your own, that "a man may take as much exercise
in walking a mile up and down-stairs as in ten on level ground." What
an opportunity was here for you to have had exercise in both these
ways! Did you embrace it, and how often?
_Franklin._ I can not immediately answer that question.
_Gout._ I will do it for you; not once.
_Franklin._ Not once?
_Gout._ Even so. During the summer you went there at six o'clock. You
found the charming lady, with her lovely children and friends, eager
to walk with you, and entertain you with their agreeable conversation;
and what has been your choice? Why, to sit on the terrace, satisfying
yourself with the fine prospect, and passing your eye over the
beauties of the garden below, without taking one step to descend and
walk about in them.
On the contrary, dear sir, you call for tea and the chess-board; and
lo! you are occupied in your seat till nine o'clock, and that besides
two hours' play after dinner; and then, instead of walking home, which
would have bestirred you a little, you step into your carriage. How
absurd to suppose that all this carelessness can be reconcilable with
health, without my interposition!
_Franklin._ I am convinced now of the justness of Poor Richard's
remark that "Our debts and our sins are always greater than we think
for."
_Gout._ So it is. You philosophers are sages in your maxims, and fools
in your conduct.
_Franklin._ But do you charge, among my crimes, that I return in a
carriage from Mr. Brillon's?
_Gout._ Certainly; for having been seated all the while, you can not
object the fatigue of the day, and can not want, therefore, the
relief of a carriage.
_Franklin._ What, then, would you have me do with my carriage?
_Gout._ Burn it, if you choose; you would at least get heat out of it
once in this way, or, if you dislike that proposal, here's another for
you; observe the poor peasants, who work in the vineyards and grounds
about the villages of Passy, Auteuil, Chaillot, etc.; you may find
every day, among these deserving creatures, four or five old men and
women, bent and perhaps crippled by weight of years and too long and
too great labor. After a most fatiguing day, these people have to
trudge a mile or two to their smoky huts. Order your coachman to set
them down. This is an act that will be good for your soul; and, at the
same time, after your visit to the Brillons, if you return on foot,
that will be good for your body.
_Franklin._ Ah! how tiresome you are!
_Gout._ Well, then, to my office; it should not be forgotten that I am
your physician. There.
_Franklin._ Ohhh! what a devil of a physician!
_Gout._ How ungrateful you are to say so! Is it not I who, in the
character of your physician, have saved you from the palsy, dropsy and
apoplexy? one or other of which would have done for you long ago but
for me.
_Franklin._ I submit, and thank you for the past, but entreat the
discontinuance of your visits for the future; for, in my mind, one had
better die than be cured so dolefully. Permit me just to hint that I
have also not been unfriendly to you. I never feed physician or quack
of any kind, to enter the list against you; if, then, you do not
leave me to my repose, it may be said you are ungrateful too.
_Gout._ I can scarcely acknowledge that as any objection. As to
quacks, I despise them; they may kill you, indeed, but can not injure
me. And as to regular physicians, they are at last convinced that the
gout, in such a subject as you are, is no disease, but a remedy; and
wherefore cure a remedy?--but to our business--there.
_Franklin._ Oh! Oh!--for Heaven's sake leave me; and I promise
faithfully never more to play at chess, but to take exercise daily,
and live temperately.
_Gout._ I know you too well. You promise fair; after a few months of
good health you will return to your old habits; your fine promises
will be forgotten like the forms of the last year's clouds. Let us
then finish the account, and I will go. But leave you with an
assurance of visiting you again at a proper time and place; for my
object is your good, and you are sensible now that I am your real
friend.