DIALOGUE BETWEEN FRANKLIN AND THE GOUT

[Guest guest]

1780 Dialogue Between Ben Franklin

And The Gout

by

Benjamin Franklin

Source:  World Library

 

FRANKLIN.

Eh! Oh! Eh! What have I done to merit these cruel sufferings?

 

GOUT.

Many things; you have ate and drank too freely, and too much indulged those

legs of yours in their indolence.

 

FRANKLIN.

Who is it that accuses me?

 

GOUT.

It is I, even I, the Gout.

 

FRANKLIN.

What! my enemy in person?

 

GOUT.

No, not your enemy.

 

FRANKLIN.

I repeat it; my enemy; for you would not only torment my body to death, but

ruin 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.

 

GOUT.

The world may think as it pleases; it is always very complaisant 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.

 

FRANKLIN.

I take-Eh! Oh!-as much exercise-Eh!-as I can, Madam Gout. You know my sedentary

state, and on that account, it would seem, Madam Gout, as if you might spare me

a little, seeing it is not altogether my own fault.

 

GOUT.

Not a jot; your rhetoric and your politeness are thrown away; your apology

avails nothing. If your situation in life is a sedentary one, your amusements,

your recreations, at least, should be active. You ought to walk or ride; or, if

the weather prevents that, play at billiards. But let us examine your course of

life.  While the mornings are long, and

you have leisure to go abroad, what do you do? Why, instead of gaining an

appetite for breakfast, by salutary-exercise, you amuse yourself with books,

pamphlets, or newspapers, which commonly are not worth the reading. Yet you eat

an inordinate breakfast, four dishes of tea, with cream, and one or two

buttered toasts, with slices of hung beef, which I fancy are not things the

most easily digested. Immediately afterward you sit down to write at your desk,

or converse with persons who apply to you on business. Thus the time passes

till one, without any kind of bodily exercise. But all this I could pardon, in

regard, as you say, to your sedentary condition. But what is your practice

after dinner? Walking in the beautiful gardens of those friends, with whom you

have dined, would be the choice of men of sense; yours is to be fixed down to

chess, where you are found engaged for two or three hours! This is your

perpetual recreation, which is the least eligible of any for a sedentary man,

because, instead of accelerating the motion of the fluids, the rigid attention

it requires helps to retard the circulation and obstruct internal secretions.

Wrapt in the speculations of this wretched game, you destroy your constitution.

What can be expected from such a course of living but a body replete with

stagnant humors, ready to fall a prey to all kinds of dangerous maladies, if I,

the Gout, did not occasionally bring you relief by agitating those humors, and

so purifying or dissipating them? If it was in some nook or alley in Paris,

deprived of walks, that you played awhile at chess after dinner, this might be

excusable; but the same taste prevails with you in Passy, Auteuil, Montmartre,

or Sanoy, places where there are the finest gardens and walks, a pure air,

beautiful women, and most agreeable and instructive conversation; all which you

might enjoy by frequenting the walks. But these are rejected for this

abominable game of chess. Fie, then, Mr. Franklin! But amidst my instructions,

I had almost forgot to administer my wholesome corrections; so take that

twinge,-and that.

 

FRANKLIN.

Oh! Eh! Oh! Ohhh! As much instruction as you please, Madam Gout, and as many

reproaches; but pray, Madam, a truce with your corrections!

 

GOUT.

No, Sir, no,-I will not abate a particle of what is so much for your good,-therefore-

 

FRANKLIN.

Oh! Ehhh!-It is not fair to say I take no exercise, when I do very often, going

out to dine and returning in my carriage.

 

GOUT.

That, of all imaginable exercises, is the most slight and insignificant, if you

allude to the motion of a carriage suspended on springs. By observing the

degree of heat obtained by different kinds of motion, we may form an estimate

of the quantity of exercise given by each. Thus, for example, if you turn out

to walk in winter with cold feet, in an hour's time you will be in a glow all

over; ride on horseback, the same effect will scarcely be perceived by four

hours' round trotting; but if you loll in a carriage, such as you have

mentioned, you may travel all day, and gladly enter the last inn to warm your

feet by a fire. Flatter yourself then no longer, that half an hour's airing in

your carriage deserves the name of exereise. Providence has appointed few to

roll in carriages, while he has given to all a pair of legs, which are machines

infinitely more commodious and serviceable. Be grateful, then, and make a

proper use of yours. Would you know how they forward the circulation of your

fluids, in the very action of transporting you from place to place; observe

when you walk, that all your weight is alternately thrown from one leg to the

other; this occasions a great pressure on the vessels of the foot, and repels

their contents; when relieved, by the weight being thrown on the other foot,

the vessels of the first are allowed to replenish, and, by a return of this

weight, this repulsion again succeeds, thus accelerating the circulation of the

blood. The heat produced in any given time depends on the degree of this

acceleration; the fluids are shaken, the humors attenuated, the secretions

facilitated, and all goes well; the cheeks are ruddy, and health is

established. Behold your fair friend at Auteuil;* *Madame Helvetias} a lady who

received from bounteous nature more really useful science, than half a dozen

such pretenders to philosophy as you have been able to extract from all your

books. When she honors you with a visit, it is on foot. She walks all hours of

the day, and leaves indolence, and its concomitant maladies, to be endured by

her horses. In this see at once the preservative of her health and personal charms.

But when you go to Auteuil, you must have your carriage, though it is no

farther from Passy to Auteuil than from Auteuil to Passy.

 

FRANKLIN.

Your reasonings grow very tiresome.

 

GOUT.

I stand corrected. I will be silent and continue my office; take that, and

that.

 

FRANKLIN.

Oh I Ohh! Talk on, I pray you!

 

GOUT.

No, no; I have a good number of twinges for you to- night, and you may be sure

of some more to-morrow.

 

FRANKLIN.

What, with such a fever! I shall go distracted. Oh! Eh! Can no one bear it for

me?

 

GOUT.

Ask that of your horses; they have served you faithfully.

 

FRANKLIN.

How can you so cruelly sport with my torments?

 

GOUT.

Sport! I am very serious. I have here a list of offences against your own

health distinctly written, and can justify every stroke inflicted on you.

 

FRANKLIN.

Read it then.

 

GOUT.

It is too long a detail; but I will briefly mention some particulars.

 

FRANKLIN.

Proceed. I am all attention.

 

GOUT.

Do you remember how often you have promised yourself, the following morning, a

walk in the grove of Boulogne, in the garden de la Muette, or in your own

garden, and have violated your promise, alleging, at one time it was too cold,

at another too warm, too windy, too moist, or what else you pleased; when in

truth it was too nothing but your insuperable love of ease?

 

FRANKLIN.

That I confess may have happened occasionally, probably ten times in a year.

 

GOUT.

Your confession is very far short of the truth; the gross amount is one hundred

and ninety-nine times.

 

FRANKLIN.

Is it possible?

 

GOUT.

So possible, that it is fact; you may rely on the accuracy of my statement. You

know Mr. Brillon's gardens, and what fine walks they contain; you know the

handsome flight of an hundred steps, which lead from the terrace above to the

lawn below. You have been in the practice of visiting this amiable family twice

a week, after dinner, and it is a maxim of your own, that " a man may take

as much exercise in walking a mile, up and down stairs, as in ten on level

ground. " What an opportunity was here for you to have had exercise in both

these ways! Did you embrace it, and how often?

 

FRANKLIN.

I cannot immediately answer that question.

 

GOUT.

I will do it for you; not once.

 

FRANKLIN.

Not once?

 

GOUT.

Even so. During the summer you went there at six o'clock. You found the

charming lady, with her lovely children and friends, eager to walk with you,

and entertain you with their agreeable conversation; and what has been your

choice? Why to sit on the terrace, satisfying yourself with the fine prospect, and

passing your eye over the beauties of the garden below, without taking one step

to descend and walkabout in them. On the contrary, you call for tea and the

chess-board; and lo! you are occupied in your seat till nine o'clock, and that

besides two hours' play after dinner; and then, instead of walking home, which

would have bestirred you a little, you step into your carriage. How absurd to

suppose that all this carelessness can be reconcilable with health, without my

interposition!

FRANKLIN.

I am convinced now of the justness of poor Richard's remark, that " Our

debts and our sins are always greater than we think for. "

 

GOUT.

So it is. You philosophers are sages in your maxims, and fools in your conduct.

 

FRANKLIN.

But do you charge, among my crimes, that I return in a carriage from Mr.

Brillon's?

 

GOUT.

Certainly; for having been seated all the while, you cannot object the fatigue

of the day, and cannot want, therefore, the relief of a carriage.

 

FRANKLIN.

What, then, would you have me do with my carriage?

 

GOUT.

Burn it, if you choose; you would at least get heat out of it once in this way;

or, if you dislike that proposal, here's another for you; observe the poor

peasants, who work in the vineyards and grounds about the villages of Passy,

Auteuil, Chaillot, & c.; you may find every day, among these deserving

creatures, four or five old men and women, bent and perhaps crippled by weight

of years and too long and too great labor. After a most fatiguing day, these

people have to trudge a mile or two to their smoky huts. Order your coachman to

set them down. This is an act that will be good for your soul; and, at the same

time, after your visit to the Brillons, if you return on foot, that will be

good for your body.

 

FRANKLIN.

Ah! how tiresome you are!

 

GOUT.

Well, then, to my office; it should not be forgotten that I am your physician.

There.

 

FRANKLIN.

Ohhh! what a devil of a physician!

 

GOUT.

How ungrateful you are to say so! Is it not I who, in the character of your

physician, have saved you from the palsy, dropsy and apoplexy? one or other of

which would have done for you long ago, but for me.

 

FRANKLIN.

I submit, and thank you for the past, but entreat the discontinuance of your

visits for the future; for, in my mind, one had better die than be cured so

dolefully. Permit me just to hint, that I have also not been unfriendly to you.

I never feed physician or quack of any kind, to enter the list against you; if,

then, you do not leave me to my repose, it may be said you are ungrateful too.

 

GOUT.

I can scarcely acknowledge that as any objection. As to quacks, I despise them;

they may kill you indeed, but cannot injure me. And as to regular physicians,

they are at last convinced that the gout, in such a subject as you are, is no

disease, but a remedy; and wherefore cure a remedy?-but to our business,-there.

 

FRANKLIN.

Oh! Oh!-for Heaven's sake leave me; and I promise faithfully never more to play

at chess, but to take exercise daily, and live temperately.

 

GOUT.

I know you too well. You promise fair; but after a few months of good health,

you will return to your old habits; your fine promises will be forgotten like

the forms of the last year's clouds. Let us then finish the account, and I will

go. But I leave you with an assurance of visiting you again at a proper time

and place; for my object is your good, and you are sensible now that I am your

real friend.

Benjamin  Franklin

 

 

 

 

 

1