The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Part 36

O blessed health! cried my father, making an exclamation, as he turned over the leaves to the next chapter, thou art before all gold and treasure; 'tis thou who enlargest the soul,-and openest all its powers to receive instruction and to relish virtue.-He that has thee, has little more to wish for;-and he that is so wretched as to want thee,-wants every thing with thee.

I have concentrated all that can be said upon this important head, said my father, into a very little room, therefore we'll read the chapter quite through.

My father read as follows:

'The whole secret of health depending upon the due contention for mastery betwixt the radical heat and the radical moisture'-You have proved that matter of fact, I suppose, above, said Yorick. Sufficiently, replied my father.

In saying this, my father shut the book,-not as if he resolved to read no more of it, for he kept his fore-finger in the chapter:-nor pettishly,-for he shut the book slowly; his thumb resting, when he had done it, upon the upper-side of the cover, as his three fingers supported the lower side of it, without the least compressive violence.-

I have demonstrated the truth of that point, quoth my father, nodding to Yorick, most sufficiently in the preceding chapter.

Now could the man in the moon be told, that a man in the earth had wrote a chapter, sufficiently demonstrating, That the secret of all health depended upon the due contention for mastery betwixt the radical heat and the radical moisture,-and that he had managed the point so well, that there was not one single word wet or dry upon radical heat or radical moisture, throughout the whole chapter,-or a single syllable in it, pro or con, directly or indirectly, upon the contention betwixt these two powers in any part of the animal oeconomy-

'O thou eternal Maker of all beings!'-he would cry, striking his breast with his right hand (in case he had one)-'Thou whose power and goodness can enlarge the faculties of thy creatures to this infinite degree of excellence and perfection,-What have we Moonites done?'

Chapter 3.x.x.xIV.

With two strokes, the one at Hippocrates, the other at Lord Verulam, did my father achieve it.

The stroke at the prince of physicians, with which he began, was no more than a short insult upon his sorrowful complaint of the Ars longa,-and Vita brevis.-Life short, cried my father,-and the art of healing tedious! And who are we to thank for both the one and the other, but the ignorance of quacks themselves,-and the stage-loads of chymical nostrums, and peripatetic lumber, with which, in all ages, they have first flatter'd the world, and at last deceived it?

-O my lord Verulam! cried my father, turning from Hippocrates, and making his second stroke at him, as the princ.i.p.al of nostrum-mongers, and the fittest to be made an example of to the rest,-What shall I say to thee, my great lord Verulam? What shall I say to thy internal spirit,-thy opium, thy salt-petre,-thy greasy unctions,-thy daily purges,-thy nightly clysters, and succedaneums?

-My father was never at a loss what to say to any man, upon any subject; and had the least occasion for the exordium of any man breathing: how he dealt with his lords.h.i.+p's opinion,-you shall see;-but when-I know not:-we must first see what his lords.h.i.+p's opinion was.

Chapter 3.x.x.xV.

'The two great causes, which conspire with each other to shorten life, says lord Verulam, are first-

'The internal spirit, which like a gentle flame wastes the body down to death:-And secondly, the external air, that parches the body up to ashes:-which two enemies attacking us on both sides of our bodies together, at length destroy our organs, and render them unfit to carry on the functions of life.'

This being the state of the case, the road to longevity was plain; nothing more being required, says his lords.h.i.+p, but to repair the waste committed by the internal spirit, by making the substance of it more thick and dense, by a regular course of opiates on one side, and by refrigerating the heat of it on the other, by three grains and a half of salt-petre every morning before you got up.-

Still this frame of ours was left exposed to the inimical a.s.saults of the air without;-but this was fenced off again by a course of greasy unctions, which so fully saturated the pores of the skin, that no spicula could enter;-nor could any one get out.-This put a stop to all perspiration, sensible and insensible, which being the cause of so many scurvy distempers-a course of clysters was requisite to carry off redundant humours,-and render the system complete.

What my father had to say to my lord of Verulam's opiates, his salt-petre, and greasy unctions and clysters, you shall read,-but not to-day-or to-morrow: time presses upon me,-my reader is impatient-I must get forwards-You shall read the chapter at your leisure (if you chuse it), as soon as ever the Tristra-paedia is published.-

Sufficeth it, at present to say, my father levelled the hypothesis with the ground, and in doing that, the learned know, he built up and established his own.-

Chapter 3.x.x.xVI.

The whole secret of health, said my father, beginning the sentence again, depending evidently upon the due contention betwixt the radical heat and radical moisture within us;-the least imaginable skill had been sufficient to have maintained it, had not the school-men confounded the task, merely (as Van Helmont, the famous chymist, has proved) by all along mistaking the radical moisture for the tallow and fat of animal bodies.

Now the radical moisture is not the tallow or fat of animals, but an oily and balsamous substance; for the fat and tallow, as also the phlegm or watery parts, are cold; whereas the oily and balsamous parts are of a lively heat and spirit, which accounts for the observation of Aristotle, 'Quod omne animal post coitum est triste.'

Now it is certain, that the radical heat lives in the radical moisture, but whether vice versa, is a doubt: however, when the one decays, the other decays also; and then is produced, either an unnatural heat, which causes an unnatural dryness-or an unnatural moisture, which causes dropsies.-So that if a child, as he grows up, can but be taught to avoid running into fire or water, as either of 'em threaten his destruction,-'twill be all that is needful to be done upon that head.-

Chapter 3.x.x.xVII.

The description of the siege of Jericho itself, could not have engaged the attention of my uncle Toby more powerfully than the last chapter;-his eyes were fixed upon my father throughout it;-he never mentioned radical heat and radical moisture, but my uncle Toby took his pipe out of his mouth, and shook his head; and as soon as the chapter was finished, he beckoned to the corporal to come close to his chair, to ask him the following question,-aside.-.... It was at the siege of Limerick, an' please your honour, replied the corporal, making a bow.

The poor fellow and I, quoth my uncle Toby, addressing himself to my father, were scarce able to crawl out of our tents, at the time the siege of Limerick was raised, upon the very account you mention.-Now what can have got into that precious noddle of thine, my dear brother Toby? cried my father, mentally.-By Heaven! continued he, communing still with himself, it would puzzle an Oedipus to bring it in point.-

I believe, an' please your honour, quoth the corporal, that if it had not been for the quant.i.ty of brandy we set fire to every night, and the claret and cinnamon with which I plyed your honour off;-And the geneva, Trim, added my uncle Toby, which did us more good than all-I verily believe, continued the corporal, we had both, an' please your honour, left our lives in the trenches, and been buried in them too.-The n.o.blest grave, corporal! cried my uncle Toby, his eyes sparkling as he spoke, that a soldier could wish to lie down in.-But a pitiful death for him! an' please your honour, replied the corporal.

All this was as much Arabick to my father, as the rites of the Colchi and Troglodites had been before to my uncle Toby; my father could not determine whether he was to frown or to smile.

My uncle Toby, turning to Yorick, resumed the case at Limerick, more intelligibly than he had begun it,-and so settled the point for my father at once.

Chapter 3.x.x.xVIII.

It was undoubtedly, said my uncle Toby, a great happiness for myself and the corporal, that we had all along a burning fever, attended with a most raging thirst, during the whole five-and-twenty days the flux was upon us in the camp; otherwise what my brother calls the radical moisture, must, as I conceive it, inevitably have got the better.-My father drew in his lungs top-full of air, and looking up, blew it forth again, as slowly as he possibly could.-

-It was Heaven's mercy to us, continued my uncle Toby, which put it into the corporal's head to maintain that due contention betwixt the radical heat and the radical moisture, by reinforceing the fever, as he did all along, with hot wine and spices; whereby the corporal kept up (as it were) a continual firing, so that the radical heat stood its ground from the beginning to the end, and was a fair match for the moisture, terrible as it was.-Upon my honour, added my uncle Toby, you might have heard the contention within our bodies, brother Shandy, twenty toises.-If there was no firing, said Yorick.

Well-said my father, with a full aspiration, and pausing a while after the word-Was I a judge, and the laws of the country which made me one permitted it, I would condemn some of the worst malefactors, provided they had had their clergy...-Yorick, foreseeing the sentence was likely to end with no sort of mercy, laid his hand upon my father's breast, and begged he would respite it for a few minutes, till he asked the corporal a question.-Prithee, Trim, said Yorick, without staying for my father's leave,-tell us honestly-what is thy opinion concerning this self-same radical heat and radical moisture?

With humble submission to his honour's better judgment, quoth the corporal, making a bow to my uncle Toby-Speak thy opinion freely, corporal, said my uncle Toby.-The poor fellow is my servant,-not my slave,-added my uncle Toby, turning to my father.-

The corporal put his hat under his left arm, and with his stick hanging upon the wrist of it, by a black thong split into a ta.s.sel about the knot, he marched up to the ground where he had performed his catechism; then touching his under-jaw with the thumb and fingers of his right hand before he opened his mouth,-he delivered his notion thus.

Chapter 3.x.x.xIX.

Just as the corporal was humming, to begin-in waddled Dr. Slop.-'Tis not two-pence matter-the corporal shall go on in the next chapter, let who will come in.-