Kidney Stones

From Pepys Diary:

Monday 26 March 1660

This day it is two years since it pleased God that I was cut of the stone at Mrs. Turner’s in Salisbury Court. And did resolve while I live to keep it a festival, as I did the last year at my house, and for ever to have Mrs. Turner and her company with me. But now it pleases God that I am where I am and so prevented to do it openly; only within my soul I can and do rejoice, and bless God, being at this time blessed be his holy name, in as good health as ever I was in my life. This morning I rose early, and went about making of an establishment of the whole Fleet, and a list of all the ships, with the number of men and guns: About an hour after that, we had a meeting of the principal commanders and seamen, to proportion out the number of these things. After that to dinner, there being very many commanders on board. All the afternoon very many orders were made, till I was very weary. At night Mr. Sheply and W. Howe came and brought some bottles of wine and some things to eat in my cabin, where we were very merry, remembering the day of being cut for the stone. Captain Cuttance came afterwards and sat drinking a bottle of wine till eleven, a kindness he do not usually do the greatest officer in the ship. After that to bed.

Samuel Pepys had much to celebrate, with his kidney stones removed.  Connection to Sir Walter Scott?  No less an authority than the Journal of the American Medical Association has published speculation in this regard.  In “Kidney Stones: Medical and Surgical Management”, doctor George Dunea states that: ‘Kidney Stones is an elegant book of over 1100 pages about an ancient disease, which was already known to Hippocrates. Montaigne thought stone disease was "a noble and dignified malady [that] attacked the great for preference." Samuel Pepys suffered from recurrent urinary calculi, and so may have Sir Walter Scott when he gloomily predicted that his making blood might soon lead to making earth….’

Burnt Wine

March 26, 1667 was a busy day for Samuel Pepys.  He begins by ruminating over the impending death of his mother.  But he has official business to attend to, people to see, and good food and wine to enjoy.  Pepys mentions wine several times in his diary, and this day he's taking it burnt.

'...So at noon home to dinner, where I find Creed, who dined with us, but I had not any time to talk with him, my head being busy, and before I had dined was called away by Sir W. Batten, and both of us in his coach (which I observe his coachman do always go now from hence towards White Hall through Tower Street, and it is the best way) to Exeter House, where the judge was sitting, and after several little causes comes on ours, and while the several depositions and papers were at large reading (which they call the preparatory), and being cold by being forced to sit with my hat off close to a window in the Hall, Sir W. Pen and I to the Castle Tavern hard by and got a lobster, and he and I staid and eat it, and drank good wine; I only burnt wine, as my whole custom of late hath been, as an evasion, God knows, for my drinking of wine (but it is an evasion which will not serve me now hot weather is coming, that I cannot pretend, as indeed I really have done, that I drank it for cold), but I will leave it off, and it is but seldom, as when I am in women’s company, that I must call for wine, for I must be forced to drink to them...'

Walter Scott was familiar with burnt wine as well, which leads the friar in "Ivanhoe" to a surprising discovery:

'..."Nay, we will have no profanation, mad Priest," said Locksley; " let us rather hear where you found this prisoner of thine."


" By Saint Dunstan," said the Friar, " I found him where I sought for better ware! I did step into the cellarage to see what might be rescued there ; for though a cup of burnt wine, with spice, be an evening's draught for an emperor, it were waste, methought, to let so much good liquor be mulled at once ; and I caught up one runlet of sack, and was coming to call more aid among these lazy knaves, who are ever to seek when a good deed is to be done, when I was advised of a strong door —Aha! thought I, here is the choicest juice of all in this secret crypt; and the knave butler, being disturbed in his vocation, hath left the key in the door—In, therefore, I went, and found just nought besides a commodity of rusted chains and this dog of a Jew, who presently rendered himself my prisoner, rescue or no rescue. I did but refresh myself after the fatigue of the action with the unbeliever, with one humming cup of sack, and was proceeding to lead forth my captive, when, crash after crash, as with wild thunder-dint and levinfire, down toppled the masonry of an outer tower, (marry beshrew their hands that built it not the firmer !) and blocked up the passage...'

Woodstock

March 26 (1826).—Here is a disagreeable morning, snowing and hailing, with gleams of bright sunshine between, and all the ground white, and all the air frozen. I don't like this jumbling of weather. It is ungenial, and gives chilblains. Besides, with its whiteness, and its coldness, and its glister, and its discomfort, it resembles that most disagreeable of all things, a vain, cold, empty, beautiful woman, who has neither mind nor heart, but only features like a doll. I do not know what is so like this disagreeable day, when the sun is so bright, and yet so uninfluential, that
"One may gaze upon its beams
Till he is starved with cold."


No matter, it will serve as well as another day to finish Woodstock. Walked out to the lake, and coquetted with this disagreeable weather, whereby I catch chilblains in my fingers and cold in my head. Fed the swans.

Finished Woodstock, however, cum tota sequela of title-page, introduction, etc., and so, as Dame Fortune says in Quevedo,


"Go wheel, and may the devil drive thee."
 
- From Scott's Journal.
 
Paraphrasing from Edinburgh University's Walter Scott Archive,Woodstock was finished hurriedly after the financial panic of 1825/26 enveloped the over-extended author, bringing him essentially into bancruptcy.  Critical reviews of the novel, which gravitates around King Charles II's escape from England during the English Civil Wars, were on the negative side.  Fortunately for Scott and his creditors, the verdict of the public was decidedly positive.