Leprosy awakes not sometimes before
forty, the gout and stone often later; but consumptive
and tabid* roots sprout more early, and at the fairest
make seventeen years of our life doubtful before that
age. They that enter the world with original diseases
as well as sin, have not only common mortality but sick
traductions to destroy them, make commonly short
courses, and live not at length but in figures; so that a
sound Caesarean nativity+ may outlast a natural birth,
and a knife may sometimes make way for a more last-
ing fruit than a midwife; which makes so few infants
now able to endure the old test of the river,# and many
* Tabes maxime contingunt ab anno decimo octavo and trigesi
mum quintum.--
Hippoc. + A sound child cut out of the body of the mother.
# Natos ad flumina primum deferimus saevoque gelu dura
mus et undis.
to have feeble children who could scarce have been mar-
ried at Sparta, and those provident states who studied
strong and healthful generations; which happen but
contingently in mere pecuniary matches or marriages
made by the candle, wherein notwithstanding there is
little redress to be hoped from an astrologer or a lawyer,
and a good discerning physician were like to prove the
most successful counsellor.
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