2. _Moderate labour_ and _gentle exercise_ have frequently removed that debility and vibratility in the blood-vessels, on which a predisposition to the gout depends. Hundreds of persons who have been reduced by misfortunes to the necessity of working for their daily bread, have thrown off a gouty diathesis derived from their patents, or acquired by personal acts of folly and intemperance. The employments of agriculture afford the most wholesome labour, and walking, the most salutary exercise. To be useful, they should be moderate. The extremes of indolence and bodily activity meet in a point. They both induce debility, which predisposes to a recurrence of a fit of the gout. Riding in a carriage, and on horseback, are less proper as a means of preventing the disease than walking. Their action upon the body is partial. The lower limbs derive no benefit from it, and on these the violent state of gout generally makes its first attack. In England, many domestic exercises have been contrived for gouty people, such as shuttle-cock, bullets, the chamber-horse, and the like, but they are all trifling in their effects, compared with labour, and exercise in the open air. The efficacy of the former of those prophylactic remedies will appear in a strong point of light, when we consider, how much the operation of the remote and exciting causes of the gout which act more or less upon persons in the humblest ranks of society, are constantly counteracted in their effects, by the daily labour which is necessary for their subsistence. 3. To prevent the recurrence of the gout, cold should be carefully avoided, more especially when it is combined with moisture. Flannel should be worn next to the skin in winter, and muslin in summer, in order to keep up a steady and uniform perspiration. Fleecy hosiery should be worn in cold weather upon the breast and knees, and the feet should be kept constantly warm and dry by means of socks and cork-soaled shoes. It was by wetting his feet, by standing two or three hours upon the damp ground, that colonel Miles produced the gout in his stomach and bowels which had nearly destroyed him in the year 1795. 4. Great moderation should be used by persons who are subject to the gout in the exercise of their understandings and passions. Intense study, fear, terror, anger, and even joy, have often excited the disease into action. It has been observed, that the political and military passions act with more force upon the system, than those which are of a social and domestic nature; hence generals and statesmen are so often afflicted with the gout, and that too, as was hinted in another place, in moments the most critical and important to the welfare of a nation. The combination of the exercises of the understanding, and the passion of avarice in gaming, have often produced an attack of this disease.