The medical side of Benjamin Franklin / by William Pepper.

  • William Pepper
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical side of Benjamin Franklin / by William Pepper. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    135/202 page 81
    One of Franklin’s “ bagatelles/’ although meant primarily to be humorous, combines as did many of his writings, both wit and meaning. It is well worth perusal, but its length precludes my quoting it in full. In the New York Medical Journal of January 2, 1909, Dr. Charles Greene Cumston, in an article entitled Benjamin Franklin from the Medical Viewpoint, gives the whole of this comical dialogue; it may be found as well in the various collected writings of Benjamin Franklin. Dialogue between Franklin and the Gout. Midnight, October 22, 1780. Eh! Oh! Eh! What have I done to merit these cruel suffer¬ ings? Many things; you have ate and drank too freely, and too much indulged those legs of yours in their indolence. Who is it that accuses me ? It is I, even I, the Gout. What! my enemy in person? No, not your enemy. I repeat it; my enemy; for you would not only torment my body to death, but rilin my good name; you reproach me as a glutton and a tippler; now all the world, that knows me, will allow that I am neither the one nor the other. The world may think as it pleases, it is always very com¬ plaisant to itself, and sometimes to its friends; but I very well know that the quantity of meat and drink proper for a man, who takes a reasonable degree of exercise, would be too much for another, who never takes any. . . . In the American Philosophical Society collection, there is a letter of Benjamin Franklin’s to Mme. Brillon, written about 1781, in which he denies that excessive indulgence in sexual pleasures is the cause of gout, as he had no gout when he was a young man. Franklin had been elected January 17, 1777, a member of the Royal Medical Society of Paris, and there are many most cordial invitations to be present at meetings from Dr. Vicq d’Azyr, who was the permanent Secretary. Franklin. Gout. Franklin. Gout. Franklin. Gout. Franklin. Gout.
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