Very soon he began to repent that he, who was by birth noble, should have been the first of his family to choose the medical profession, and this against the will of his mother, and without the knowledge of his other relations. “I lamented, he says, with tears the sin of my disobedience, and regretted the time and labour which had been thus vainly expended: and often with a sorrowful heart I intreated the Lord that he would be pleased to lead me to a vocation not of my own choice, but in which I might best perform his will; and I made a vow that to whatever way of life he might call me, I would follow it, and do my utmost endeavour therein to serve him. Then, as if I had tasted of the forbidden fruit, I discovered my own nakedness. I saw that there was neither truth nor knowledge in my putative learning; and thought it cruel to derive money from the sufferings of others; and unfitting that an art founded upon charity, and conferred upon the condition of exercising compassion, should be converted into a means of lucre.” These reflections were promoted if not induced by his having caught a disorder which as it is not mentionable in polite circles, may be described by intimating that the symptom from which it derives its name is alleviated by what Johnson defines tearing or rubbing with the nails. It was communicated to him by a young lady's glove, into which in a evil minute of sportive gallantry he had insinuated his hand. The physicians treated him, _secundum artem_, in entire ignorance of the disease; they bled him to cool the liver, and they purged him to carry off the torrid choler and the salt phlegm, they repeated this clearance again and again, till from a hale strong and active man they had reduced him to extreme leanness and debility without in the slightest degree abating the cutaneous disease. He then persuaded himself that the humours which the Galenists were so triumphantly expelling from his poor carcase had not preexisted there in that state but were produced by the action of their drugs. Some one cured him easily by brimstone, and this is said to have made him feelingly perceive the inefficiency of the scholastic practice which he had hitherto pursued.