ith a bow of great reserve, and his eye bent on the
ground: she then filled the cup with sugar, and pouring weak tea on it,
sent it him: he drank that too, looked at her steadily, and blushed for
her. The lady declared the man was dumb; the rest thought him perverse,
and obstinate; but a constant and steady perseverance in an easy method
cured him.

All these are miseries which the disease, while it retains its natural
form, can bring upon the patient; and thus he will in time be worn out,
and led miserably, though slowly, to the grave. Let him not indulge his
inactivity so far as to give way to this, because it is represented as
far off; the disease may suddenly and frightfully change its nature; and
swifter evils follow.

SECT. IV.

The DANGER.

We have done with the obstruction considered in itself; but this, though
often unsurmountable by art, at least by the methods now in use, will be
sometimes broken through at once by nature, or by accidents; and bring
on fatal evils. These are strictly different diseases, and are no
otherway concerned here, than as the consequences of that of which we
are treating.

The thick and glutinous blood which has so long stagnated in the spleen,
will have in that time altered its nature, and acquired a very great
degree of acrimony: while it lies dormant, this does no more mischiefs,
than those named already; but when violent exercise, a fit of outrageous
anger, or any thing else that suddenly shocks and disturbs the frame,
puts it in motion, it melts at once into a kind of liquid putrefaction.
Being now thin, it mixes itself readily with the blood again, and brings
on putrid fevers; destroys the substance of the spleen itself, or being
thrown upon some other of the viscera, corrodes them, and leads on this
way a swift and miserable death. If it fall upon the liver, its tender
pulpy substance is soon destroyed, jaundices beyond the help of art
first follow, then dropsies and all their train of misery; if on lungs,
consumptions; if on the brain, convulsions, epilepsy, palsy, apoplexy;
if on the surface, leprosy.

The intention of cure is to melt this coagulation softly, not to break
it violently; and then to give it a very gentle passage through the
bowels. There is no safe way for it to take but that; and even that when
urged too far may bring on fatal dysenteries.

Let none wonder at the sudden devastation which sometimes arises from
this long stagnant matter, when li