am confident will be more beneficial to the health of, Madam, _Your real and faithful_ _Friend and Servant._ [1] Of the Stone, _ch._ 6. See the _ch._ called, _A Numero-Critical Paradox of supplies_. [2] _Ch._ 7. [3] _Ch._ 8. XLI. _MADAM,_ Your _Author_ speaking of the _Gout_, and of that kind of Gout which is called _Hereditary_, says, _It consists immediately in the Spirit of Life._ First, as for that which is called an Hereditary Disease, propagated from Parents upon their Children; my opinion is, That it is nothing else but the same actions of the animate matter, producing the same effect in the Child as they did in the Parent: For example; the same motions which made the Gout in the Parent, may make the same disease in the Child; but every Child has not his Parents diseases, and many Children have such diseases as their Parents never had; neither is any disease tied to a particular Family by Generation, but they proceed from irregular motions, and are generally in all Mankind; and therefore properly there is no such thing as an hereditary propagation of diseases; for one and the same kind of disease may be made in different persons, never a kin to one another, by the like motions; but because Children have such a neer relation to their Parents by Generation, if they chance to have the same diseases with their Parents, men are apt to conclude it comes by inheritance; but we may as well say, that all diseases are hereditary; for there is not any disease in Nature but is produced by the actions of Nature's substance; and if we receive life and all our bodily substance by Generation from our Parents, we may be said to receive diseases too; for diseases are inherent in the matter or substance of Nature, which every Creature is a part of, and are real beings made by the corporeal motions of the animate matter, although irregular to us; for as this matter moves, so is Life or Death, Sickness or Health, and all natural effects; and we consisting of the same natural matter, are naturally subject as well to diseases as to health, according as the Matter moves. Thus all diseases are hereditary in Nature; nay, the Scripture it self confirms it, informing us, that diseases, as well as death, are by an hereditary propagation derived from _Adam_ upon all Posterity. But as for the Gout, your _Authors_ doctrine is,[1] _That Life is not a body, nor proper to a body, nor the off-spring of corporeal Proprieties_,[2] but a _meer No-thing_; and that _the Spirit of Life is a real being, to wit, the arterial blood resolved by the Ferment of the heart into salt air, and enlightned by life_,[3] and that the Gout doth immediately consist in this spirit of life. All which how it doth agree, I cannot conceive; for that a real being should be enlightned by Nothing, and be a spirit of Nothing, is not imaginable, nor how the Gout should inhabit in the spirit of life; for then it would follow, that a Child, as soon as it is brought forth