808 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



had never made his discovery of a definite form of disease previously 

 unrecognized, which appears to conform in all important points with 

 the life-long disease of the illustrious dean. 



Even in Swift's latest biography, or rather that fragment of one 

 which so strongly makes us feel that touch of the vanished hand of 

 the most appreciative critic of men of letters, the late John Forster's 

 charming volume, the author speaks of Swift's giddiness and deaf- 

 ness, not as symptoms of one disorder, but as " two life-long enemies," 

 and it is a curious enough fact that Swift himself attributed the 

 origin of these two enemies to different causes, operating at differ- 

 ent periods. In a letter to Mrs. Howard in 1727 he writes : " About 

 two hours before you were born I got my giddiness by eating a hun- 

 dred golden pippins at a time at Richmond ; and when you were four 

 years and a quarter old, bating two days, having made a fine seat fur- 

 ther in Surrey, where I used to read, there I got my deafness, and 

 these two friends, one or other, have visited me one or other every 

 year since ; and, being old acquaintances, have now thought fit to 

 come together." Mrs. Howard having been born in 1690, the date of 

 the deafness given in this letter would be 1694, when Swift was twen- 

 ty-seven years old. But in a passage quoted by Forster, page 48, 

 Swift wrote : " In England before I was twenty I got a cold, which 

 gave me a deafness that I could never clear myself of . . . my left 

 ear has never been well since." April 30, 1737. 



One can not but concur in Johnson's remark on the above, that 

 "the original of diseases is commonly obscure, and almost every 

 school-boy eats as much fruit as he can get, without inconvenience." 

 But it may also be remarked that if Swift had been " a contemporary 

 patient," although we might not have effected a radical cure of his 

 disease, we should at least have understood enough of its origin and 

 nature to have saved him from tormenting himself by a life-long ab- 

 stinence from fruit, of which he was passionately fond, under the 

 belief that it had caused and continued to excite his disease by in- 

 ducing that " coldness of stomach to which he attributed his vertigo 

 and its accompanying sickness." 



In a letter of 1708 he says that, " I was through a long time pur- 

 sued by a cruel illness that seized me at fits and hindered me from 

 pursuing any business." It is possible that this illness was but a 

 return of the dangerous colic from which he suffered in 1696 ; and it 

 is not until 1710 to 1713, and while residing in London, that he de- 

 scribes in some detail the symptoms of his life-long complaint in his 

 " Journal to Stella." The most descriptive passage is perhaps the one 

 dated October 31, 1710 : 



"This morning, sitting in my bed, I had a fit of giddiness; the 

 room turned round for about a minute, and then it went off, leaving 

 me sicJcish, but not very. I saw Dr. Cockburn to-day, and he promises 

 to send me the pills that did me good last year ; and likewise has 



