250 



being taught by experience, that its acid tendency, du- 

 ring that period, always induced his gravelly paroxism?. 

 And Clapham, who suffered much from gout and gra- 

 .vel, and was, -for many years, a ship-captain, informed 

 pie, his voyages to America were always succeeded by iits 

 of both; which he attributed to a free indulgence in the 

 use of cyder, a beverage to which he was :tlyen peculiarly 

 attached: and that, at any time, he could excite a pa- 

 roxism of one or the other, or both, by drinking acidu- 

 lated punch, or claret. Khensk, our greatest martyr, (hav- 

 ing all his articulations distorted by gouty concretions, 

 and Avho once lived in easy circumstances,) assured nie, 

 that the severest and longest protracted fit of the gout 

 ^nd gravel, he ever experienced, was occasioned by a sur- 

 feit of a poor vapid claret. And I shall conclude this part 

 of my subject, by observing, that the clergy of the Ro- 

 man Catholic church are peculiarly liable to these com- 

 plaints, and form no small proportion of the number ope- 

 rated upon in this city: which I would attribute to the 

 vse of a £mall and sour winCj during their residence in 

 thejr seminaries abroad. 



These facts being pretty well established and acknow- 

 ledged, it is time to inquire, how far we may account for 

 them ; and whether experiments., instituted out of the body, 

 may not throv/ some light on this subject. Dr. Saunders, 

 in a letter to Ur. Percival, " Percival's Essays Medical 

 and Experimental," Vol. III. on the subject of carbonic 

 acid, as a solvent of calculous concretions, observes, " if 



" a more 



