The lips turn pale, the eyes loose their brightness and by degrees the white grows as it were greenish, the gums want their due firmness, with their proper colour; and an unpleasing foulness grows upon the teeth: the inside of the mouth is pale and furred, and the throat dry and husky: the colour of the skin is pale (though there are periods when the face is florid) and as the obstruction gathers ground, and more affects the liver, the whole body becomes yellow, tawny, greenish, and at length of that deep and dusky hue, to which men of swift imagination have given the name of blackness. These symptoms do not all appear in any one period of the disease, or in one case, but at one time or other all of them, as well as those which follow: the flesh becomes cold to the touch, though the patient does not himself perceive it; the limbs grow numbed and torpid, the breathing dull and slow, and the voice hollow; and usually the appetite in this period declines, and comes almost to nothing: night sweats come on, black swellings appear on the veins, the flesh wastes and the breast becomes flat and hollow: the mouth is full of a thin spittle, the head is dizzy and confus'd, and sometimes there is an unconquerable numbness in the organs of speech. I have known the temporary silence that follows upon this last symptom become a jest to the common herd; and the unhappy patient, instead of compassion and assistance, receive the reproof of sullenness, from those who should have known and acted better. About twenty years ago I met on a visit at Catthorpe in Leicestershire a young gentleman of distinguished learning and abilities, who at certain times was speechless. The vulgar thought it a pretence: and a jocose lady, where he was at tea with company, putting him as she said to a trial, poured out a dish very strong and without sugar. He drank it and returned the cup with a bow of great reserve, and his eye bent on the ground: she then filled the cup with sugar, and pouring weak tea on it, sent it him: he drank that too, looked at her steadily, and blushed for her. The lady declared the man was dumb; the rest thought him perverse, and obstinate; but a constant and steady perseverance in an easy method cured him. All these are miseries which the disease, while it retains its natural form, can bring upon the patient; and thus he will in time be worn out, and led miserably, though slowly, to the grave. Let him not indulge his inactivity so far as to give way to this, because it is represented as far off; the disease may suddenly and frightfully change its nature; and swifter evils follow. SECT. IV. The DANGER.