God bless you, and send you good health, which is better than all the riches of the world!

LETTER CCCIII

London, November 3, 1767.

My dear friend:  Your last letter brought me but a scurvy account of your health.  For the headaches you complain of, I will venture to prescribe a remedy, which, by experience, I found a specific, when I was extremely plagued with them.  It is either to chew ten grains of rhubarb every night going to bed:  or, what I think rather better, to take, immediately before dinner, a couple of rhubarb pills, of five grains each; by which means it mixes with the aliments, and will, by degrees, keep your body gently open.  I do it to this day, and find great good by it.  As you seem to dread the approach of a German winter, I would advise you to write to General Conway, for leave of absence for the three rigorous winter months, which I dare say will not be refused.  If you choose a worse climate, you may come to London; but if you choose a better and a warmer, you may go to Nice en Provence, where Sir William Stanhope is gone to pass his winter, who, I am sure, will be extremely glad of your company there.

I go to the Bath next Saturday.  ‘Utinam de frustra’.  God bless you!

LETTER CCCIV

Bath, September 19, 1767.

My dear friend:  Yesterday I received your letter of the 29th past, and am very glad to find that you are well enough to think that you may perhaps stand the winter at Dresden; but if you do, pray take care to keep both your body and your limbs exceedingly warm.

As to my own health, it is, in general, as good as I could expect it, at my age; I have a good stomach, a good digestion, and sleep well; but find that I shall never recover the free use of my legs, which are now full as weak as when I first came hither.

You ask me questions concerning Lord C------, which neither I, nor, I
believe, anybody but himself can answer; however, I will tell you all
that I do know, and all that I guess, concerning him.  This time
twelvemonth he was here, and in good health and spirits, except now and
then some little twinges of the gout.  We saw one another four or five
times, at our respective houses; but for these last eight months, he has
been absolutely invisible to his most intimate friends, ’les sous
Ministres’:  he would receive no letters, nor so much as open any packet
about business.

His physician, Dr.-----, as I am told, had, very ignorantly, checked a
coming fit of the gout, and scattered it about his body; and it fell
particularly upon his nerves, so that he continues exceedingly vaporish;
and would neither see nor speak to anybody while he was here.  I sent him
my compliments, and asked leave to wait upon him; but he sent me word
that he was too ill to see anybody whatsoever.  I met him frequently