I was successively under the
hands of Morand, Daran, Helvetius, Malouin, and Thierry: men able in
their profession, and all of them my friends, who treated me each
according to his own manner, without giving me the least relief, and
weakened me considerably. The more I submitted to their direction, the
yellower, thinner, and weaker I became. My imagination, which they
terrified, judging of my situation by the effect of their drugs,
presented to me, on this side of the tomb, nothing but continued
sufferings from the gravel, stone, and retention of urine.
Everything which gave relief to others, ptisans, baths, and
bleeding, increased my tortures. Perceiving the bougies of Daran,
the only ones that had any favorable effect, and without which I
thought I could no longer exist, to give me a momentary relief, I
procured a prodigious number of them, that, in case of Daran's
death, I might never be at a loss. During the eight or ten years in
which I made such frequent use of these, they must, with what I had
left, cost me fifty louis.
It will easily be judged, that such expensive and painful means
did not permit me to work without interruption; and that a dying man
is not ardently industrious in the business by which he gains his
daily bread.
Literary occupations caused another interruption not less
prejudicial to my daily employment. My discourse had no sooner
appeared, than the defenders of letters fell upon me as if they had
agreed with each to do it.
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