DISEASES CLASS IV. 1. 2. 16 



the bottle circulated without limit. This mode of living, though 

 by no means considered as excess for men, was certainly too 

 great for a youth of my age. This style of living I continued, 

 when with the regiment, till the latter end of the year 1769, 

 when I had the misfortune to sleep in a damp bed at Sheffield 

 on a journey to York, but arrived there before I felt the ill effects 

 of it. I was then seized with a violent inflammatory rheumatism 

 with great inflammation of my eyes, and was attended by Dr. 

 Deal try; so violent was the disorder, that I was bled for it eight 

 times in less than a fortnight; and was three months, before I 

 could consider my health perfectly re-established. Dr. Dealtry 

 told me, that I should be subject to similar attacks for many 

 years; and that he had no doubt, from the tendency he found in 

 my habit to inflammation, that, when I was farther advanced in 

 life, I should change that complaint for the gout. He predicted 

 truly; for the three succeeding winters I had the same complaint, 

 but not so violently; the fourth winter I escaped, and imputed 

 my escape to the continuance of cold bathing during the whole 

 of that w r inter; after that I never escaped it, till I had a regular 

 and severe fit of the gout: after the first attack of rheumatic 

 fever I was more abstemious in my manner of living, though 

 when in company I never subjected myself to any great re- 

 straint. In the year 1774 I had quitted the army, and being in 

 a more retired situation, was seldom led into any excess; in 

 1776 and 1777 I was in the habit of drinking a good deal of 

 wine very frequently, though not constantly. After that period 

 till the year 1781, I drank a larger quantity of wine regularly, 

 but very seldom to any degree of intoxication. I lived much at 

 that time in the society of some gentlemen, who usually drank 

 nearly a bottle of wine daily after dinner. I must here however 

 observe, that at no part of my life was I accustomed to drink 

 wine in an evening, and very seldom drank any thing more than 

 a single half-pint glass of some sort of spirits diluted with much 

 water. Till the year 1781 I had always been accustomed to 

 use very violent and continued exercise on horse-back; in the 

 winter months I pursued all field diversions, and in the summer 

 months I rode frequent and long journeys; and with this exercise 

 was liable to perspire to great excess; besides which I was sub- 

 ject to very profuse night-sweats, and had frequently boils break 

 out all over me, especially in the spring and autumn; for which 

 I took no medicine, except a little of the flowers of sulphur with 

 cream of tartar in honey. 



" You will observe I bring every thing down to the date of 

 1781. In the month of October in that year, when I was just 

 entered into the thirty-second year of my age, I had the first 



