Note 709 — THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. (continued 4)
Reading edition
How much he had physicked himself is shewn by a letter of May 8. 'I took on Thursday,' he writes, 'two brisk catharticks and a dose of calomel. Little things do me no good. At night I was much better. Next day cathartick again, and the third day opium for my cough. I lived without flesh all the three days.' Piozzi Letters, ii.257. He had been bled at least four times that year and had lost about fifty ounces of blood. Ante, pp.142, 146. On Aug. 3, 1779, he wrote:—'Of the last fifty days I have taken mercurial physick, I believe, forty.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. v.461.