For the remaining part of the day, if he had no poor to visit, he shut himself up, and read books of literature or physick, but chiefly physick, as the duty of his profession required.

On Aug. 3, 1779, he wrote:'Of the last fifty days I have taken mercurial physick, I believe, forty.'

I went to Oxford, where the asthma was very tyrannical, and the dropsy began again to threaten me; but seasonable physick stopped the inundation: I then returned to London, and in July took a resolution to visit Staffordshire and Derbyshire, where I am yet struggling with my diseases.

But not while she is giving him ye physick.