Johnson has been very ill for some time; and in a letter of anxious
apprehension he writes to me, "Ask your physicians about my case."
'This, you see, is not authority for a regular consultation: but I have
no doubt of your readiness to give your advice to a man so eminent, and
who, in his _Life of Garth_, has paid your profession a just and elegant
compliment: "I believe every man has found in physicians great
liberality and dignity of sentiment, very prompt effusions[816] of
beneficence, and willingness to exert a lucrative art, where there is no
hope of lucre."
'Dr. Johnson is aged seventy-four. Last summer he had a stroke of the
palsy, from which he recovered almost entirely. He had, before that,
been troubled with a catarrhous cough. This winter he was seized with a
spasmodick asthma, by which he has been confined to his house for about
three months. Dr. Brocklesby writes to me, that upon the least admission
of cold, there is such a constriction upon his breast, that he cannot
lie down in his bed, but is obliged to sit up all night, and gets rest
and sometimes sleep, only by means of laudanum and syrup of poppies; and
that there are oedematous tumours on his legs and thighs.
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