mind," that is, anxiety owing to debt and dissappointment : and to musing in the night must be added close application to study during the day. Of ordinary intemperance there is no evidence at any period of his life; his "good draught of strong beer at bed time," if we may believe Aubrey, had a beneficial effect. However this may have been, his disorder continued, being kept up as his mother thought, and no doubt correctly, by "inward secret grief:" but his active life during the years that he held the highest offices of the law, shows conclusively that his indigestion could not then have been in any severe form; and we have no notice of any other ailment except a hæmorrhoidal attack of very short duration, the passage of a small calculus, which I understand to be the "fit of the stone" mentioned by his brother, and of which probably there was no recurrence; two slight fits of the gout, though it may be inferred from a remark on the remedy he used that he had more; and a still slighter attack of ague-a mere ephemera till his fall. The consequence of this was a fit of very acute neuralgia, which was followed by other disorders not definitely named, but doubtless the effect of mental distress, advancing years, and resolute application to study, to make up, as he said, for lost time. His life was at last suddenly cut short by an attack of bronchitis, brought on by that love of natural science which had brightened the whole course of his life, and continued undiminished in disgrace and premature old age. When a boy he is said to have tried to discover the cause of a singular echo in St. James's Park, (L. M. 3.) and in dying he reported that his last experiment had "succeeded excellently well." Of the means that he took to preserve and restore his health the account is very imperfect; but in addition to his remark as to physic in the spring, "which at this time I have ever used," Dr. Rawley tells us that, "for his diet, it was rather a plentiful and liberal diet, as his stomach would bear it ;" and that he took "about three grains of nitre, the use of which he so much extolled in his writings, in thin warm broth every morning, for thirty years together next before his death. For physic he took only a maceration of rhubarb infused into a draught of white wine and beer mingled together for the space of half an hour, once in six or seven days, immediately before his meal, whether dinner or supper. As for other physic, in an ordinary way (whatsoever hath been vulgarly spoken) he took not." His remedy for the gout, "which did constantly ease him of his pain within two hours," was first to apply a poultice, then a bath or fomentation, and then a plaister. roses. 1. The poultice. crumb only, thin cut. Let it be boiled in milk till it grow to a pulp. Add in the end a dram and a half of the powder of red Of saffron ten grains. Of oil of roses an ounce. Let it be spread upon a linen cloth, and applied lukewarm; and continued for three hours space. 2. The bath or fomentation. Take of sage leaves half an handful. Of the root of hemlock sliced six drams. Of briony roots half an ounce. Of the leaves of red roses two pugils. Let them be boiled in a pottle of water, wherein steel hath been quenched, till the liquor come to a quart. After the straining, put in half an handful of bay-salt. Let it be used with scarlet cloth, or scarlet wool, dipped in the liquor hot, and so renewed seven times; all in the space of a quarter of an hour, or little more. 3. The plaister. Take Emplastrum diacalciteos, as much as is sufficient for the part you mean to cover. Let it be dissolved with oil of roses, in such a consistence as will stick, and spread upon a piece of holland and applied." (W. 1, 16 and 11, 365.) Take of manchet about three ounces, the This treatment "seldom failed" Bacon says, "to drive away the gout in twenty-four hours' space," and, though the same effect might have been produced by simpler, it could scarcely have been by safer, means. In this respect it contrasts favourably with the practice of his great contemporary, Harvey, in his own case, for he " was much and often troubled with the gout, and his way of cure was thus; he would then sit with his legs bare, if it were frost, on the leads of Cockaine house, put them into a pail of water, till he was almost dead with cold, and betake himself to his stove, and so 'twas gone." (Aubrey II, 384.) But speedy relief is not always best. "Of the two," said Lord Bacon on one occasion, "better recourse of pain than intermission to breed peril." (L. & L. II, 34.) These great men differed on other and more important points, for Aubrey says Harvey had been physician to Lord Bacon, whom he much esteemed for his wit and style, but would not allow him to be a great philosopher. Said he to me, 'He writes philosophy like a Lord Chancellor,' speaking in derision.” And if we may suppose that Bacon was dissatisfied with Harvey's medical practice, he was not peculiar in his opinion, for Aubrey further says, "all his profession would allow him to be an excellent anatomist, but I never heard any that admired his therapeutique way. I knew several practitioners in this town (London) that would not have given threepence for one of his bills (prescriptions ;) and that a man could hardly tell by one of his bills what he did aim at." (II, 385.) Probably these depreciators of Harvey's skill were disbelievers in his doctrine of the circulation of the blood, for Aubrey heard him say that after his book on that subject came out, “he fell mightily in his practice, and 'twas believed by the vulgar that he was crackbrained;" but his fame now rests principally on that discovery, as the scientific glory of Bacon depends chiefly on his Novum Organum, which was for many years, and is even yet much less popular than some of his other writings, but which contains nevertheless his principal contributions to that "philosophia prima— primitive or summary philosophy," which, like the stem of a tree, "before it come to discontinue and break itself into arms and boughs," is common to all the sciences. P.S.-In the 11th volume of Lord Bacon's Works (the 4th of his Letters and Life), edited by Mr. Spedding, is published for the first time a collection of "Private Memoranda," consisting chiefly of notes on the state of his affairs and the objects he had in view, "for better help of memory and judgment;" but with occasional remarks on his health and the means used for its improvement. From these I subjoin a short extract, and refer the reader for the remainder, and Mr. Spedding's judicious comment, to the volume from which it is taken. "When I was last at Gorhambury I was taken much wth my symptome of melancholy and dout of p1sent perill. I found it first by occasion of soppe wth sack taken midde meale and it contynued wth me that night and ye next mornyng, but note it cleared and went from me without purge and I turned light and disposed of my self." p. 57. "I have used for a fortnight to discontynue clarett wyne and to use midd mele a soppe in sack or a small drawght. At first I found as I thought some strength of stomach by it, having douted before that by ye alman milk and barly creme, and leavyng wyne and wrong of phisike my stomach was to much neglected. But since I have fownd it hath made me more subject to my symptome. And I cannot impute it to anything more that there hath byne a kynd of relaps, offer to grone, ructus, fervencie, sense of torrefaction in viscere, And ye rest, and specially straungnesse and clowdynesse; for both it burnes in the stomach and is vaporous, and I had a manifest sense thereof at Gorhambury that in the very taking of it midd supper I was taken wth the like symptomes. Therefore I think I must resort agayn to some small clarett wyne refrigerate wth herbes; for that increaseth spirits and vaporeth not so much nor burneth not so much in the bottom of the stomach where my distemper is." p. 80. J. D. |