I have, indeed, by standing carelessly at an open window,
got a very troublesome cough, which it has been necessary to appease by
opium, in larger quantities than I like to take, and I have not found it
give way so readily as I expected; its obstinacy, however, seems at last
disposed to submit to the remedy, and I know not whether I should then
have a right to complain of any morbid sensation. My asthma is, I am
afraid, constitutional and incurable; but it is only occasional, and
unless it be excited by labour or by cold, gives me no molestation, nor
does it lay very close siege to life; for Sir John Floyer[827], whom the
physical race consider as authour of one of the best books upon it,
panted on to ninety, as was supposed; and why were we content with
supposing a fact so interesting, of a man so conspicuous? because he
corrupted, at perhaps seventy or eighty, the register, that he might
pass for younger than he was. He was not much less than eighty, when to
a man of rank who modestly asked his age, he answered, "Go look;" though
he was in general a man of civility and elegance.
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