Think for me what I can do.
'I received your pamphlet, and when I write again may perhaps tell you some opinion about it; but you will forgive a man struggling with disease his neglect of disputes, politicks, and pamphlets[810]. Let me have your prayers. My compliments to your lady, and young ones. Ask your physicians about my case: and desire Sir Alexander Dick[811] to write me his opinion.
'I am, dear Sir, &c.
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
'Feb. 11, 1784.'
'TO MRS. LUCY PORTER, IN LICHFIELD.
'MY DEAREST LOVE,
'I have been extremely ill of an asthma and dropsy, but received, by the mercy of GOD, sudden and unexpected relief last Thursday, by the discharge of twenty pints of water[812]. Whether I shall continue free, or shall fill again, cannot be told. Pray for me.
'Death, my dear, is very dreadful; let us think nothing worth our care but how to prepare for it: what we know amiss in ourselves let us make haste to amend, and put our trust in the mercy of GOD, and the intercession of our Saviour. I am, dear Madam,
'Your most humble servant,
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
'Feb. 23, 1784.'
TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.
'DEAR SIR,
'I have just advanced so far towards recovery as to read a pamphlet; and you may reasonably suppose that the first pamphlet which I read was yours. I am very much of your opinion, and, like you, feel great indignation at the indecency with which the King is every day treated. Your paper contains very considerable knowledge of history and of the constitution, very properly produced and applied. It will certainly raise your character[813], though perhaps it may not make you a Minister of State.
'I desire you to see Mrs. Stewart once again, and tell her, that in the letter-case was a letter relating to me, for which I will give her, if she is willing to give it me, another guinea[814]. The letter is of consequence only to me.
'I am, dear Sir, &c. 'SAM. JOHNSON.' 'London, Feb. 27, 1784.'
In consequence of Johnson's request that I should ask our physicians about his case, and desire Sir Alexander Dick to send his opinion, I transmitted him a letter from that very amiable Baronet, then in his eighty-first year, with his faculties as entire as ever; and mentioned his expressions to me in the note accompanying it: 'With my most affectionate wishes for Dr. Johnson's recovery, in which his friends, his country, and all mankind have so deep a stake:' and at the same time a full opinion upon his case by Dr. Gillespie, who, like Dr. Cullen, had the advantage of having passed through the gradations of surgery and pharmacy, and by study and practice had attained to such skill, that my father settled on him two hundred pounds a year for five years, and fifty pounds a year during his life, as an honorarium to secure his particular attendance. The opinion was conveyed in a letter to me, beginning, 'I am sincerely sorry for the bad state of health your very learned and illustrious friend, Dr. Johnson, labours under at present.'
'TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. 'DEAR SIR,
'Presently after I had sent away my last letter, I received your kind medical packet. I am very much obliged both to you and your physicians for your kind attention to my disease. Dr. Gillespie has sent me an excellent consilium medicum, all solid practical experimental knowledge. I am at present, in the opinion of my physicians, (Dr. Heberden and Dr. Brocklesby,) as well as my own, going on very hopefully. I have just begun to take vinegar of squills. The powder hurt my stomach so much, that it could not be continued.
'Return Sir Alexander Dick my sincere thanks for his kind letter; and bring with you the rhubarb[815] which he so tenderly offers me.
'I hope dear Mrs. Boswell is now quite well, and that no evil, either real or imaginary, now disturbs you.
'I am, &c.
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
'London, March 2, 1784.'
I also applied to three of the eminent physicians who had chairs in our celebrated school of medicine at Edinburgh, Doctors Cullen, Hope, and Monro, to each of whom I sent the following letter:--
'DEAR SIR,
'Dr. 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.