- YET, of the ills which torture Libya’s sons, [290]
- Worms tyrannize the worst. They, Proteus-like,1
- Each symptom of each malady assume;
- And, under every mask, the assassins kill.
- Now in the guise of horrid spasms, they writhe
- The tortured body, and all sense o’er-power. [295]
- Sometimes, like Mania,2 with her head downcast,
- They cause the wretch in solitude to pine;
- Or frantic, bursting from the strongest chains,
- To frown with look terrific, not his own.
- Sometimes like Ague,3 with a shivering mien, [300]
- The teeth gnash fearful, and the blood runs chill:
- Anon the ferment maddens in the veins,
- And a false vigour animates the frame.
- Again, the dropsy’s bloated mask they steal;
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Or, “melt with minings of the hectic fire.”4 [305]
- SAY, to such various mimic forms of death;
- What remedies shall puzzled art oppose?—
- Thanks to the Almighty, in each path-way hedge,
- Rank cow-itch grows, whose sharp unnumber’d stings,
- Sheath’d in Melasses, from their dens expell, [310]
- Fell dens of death, the reptile lurking foe.—
VER. 309. Cow-itch] See notes in Book II.
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In Greek mythology, Proteus, an old man and shepherd on the island of Pharos near Egypt, was able to shape-shift. The worms’ ability to cause multiple maladies and symptoms is equated to Proteus’s shape-shifting abilities. ↩︎
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Roman and Etruscan goddess of the dead who ruled the underworld with Mantus. ↩︎
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An acute or high fever or a disease that causes such. Often used to refer to malaria. ↩︎
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Gilmore identifies this line as an adaption from John Armstrong’s description of a lung infection in The Art of Preserving Health (1744). ↩︎