An extract from GULLIVERS TRAVELS by JONATHAN SWIFT

“There was a most Ingenious Doctor who seemed to be perfectly versed in the whole Nature and System of Government. This illustrious Person had very usefully employed his Studies in finding out effectual Remedies for all Diseases and Corruptions, to which the several kinds of public Administration are subject by the Vices or Infirmities of those who govern, as well as by the Licentiousness of those who are to obey. For instance; Whereas all Writers and Reasoners have agreed, that there is a strict universal Resemblance between the Natural and the Political Body; can there be anything more evident, than that the health of both must be preserved, and the Diseases cured by the same Prescriptions? It is allowed, that Senates and great Councils are often troubled with redundant, ebullient, and other peccant Humours, with many Diseases of the Head, and more of the Heart; with strong Convulsions, with grievous Contractions of the Nerves and Sinews in both Hands, but especially the Right: With Spleen, Flatus, Vertigoes and Deleriums; with Scrofulous Tumours full of fetid purulent Matter; with sour frothy Ructations, with Canine Appetites and crudeness of Digestion, besides many others needless to mention.”

Humours: The different kinds of moisture in man’s body, reckoned by the old physicians to be phlegm, blood, choler, and melancholy, which, as they pre-dominated, were supposed to determine the temper of mind.
Flatus: Wind gathered in any cavities of the body, caused by indigestion and a gross internal perspiration.
Scrofulous: Pertaining to scrofula, a depravation of the humours of the body, which breaks out in sores, commonly called the king’s evil’; a form of tuberculosis.
Ructations: a belching arising from wind and indigestion.
Canine Appetites: canine hunger, in medicine, is an appetite which cannot be satisfied.