The Gazette

Extracted from the Farmer's Weekly Museum.

Endemical Diseases of Europe,
Discovered by feeling the pulse of the Times—

FRANCE, in a Phrenzy Fever, which it is apprehended will require
more bleeding and purging than ever; notwithstanding she has undergone
these operations already in a very violent degree.

SPAIN, labouring under a most oppressive fit of Indigestion; from having
been compelled to swallow an Olive Branch, which sticks in her stomach.
So that she can neither get it up nor down.

PORTUGAL, afflicted in a similar manner, with strong symptoms of a Surfeit besides, and no Physician to advise with but an old woman, who is very
subject to fits of Non Compos, of which there cannot be a greater proof than her
styling herself the Most Faithful, while she makes no scruple to break faith with
her very best friends.

GERMANY, a little touched in the wind with hard pushing, which the
French faculty pronounce to be an Asthma, and that another brush with
Buonaparte, will entirely knock her up: Be that as it may—the race is not to the
swift—and whether she gives in for want of strength she and her rider have proved
herself bottom.

HOLLAND, in a Galloping Consumption; occasioned by not wearing the
breeches in so profuse a degree as usual; being obliged to supply the Sans Culottes, by which poor Mynheer has got the pip, and it has flown from his posteriors to the noble parts. The disorder gains ground daily, and the patient who
was remarkable for being fat as a hog, is now reduced to a mere shadow.—
The late course of medicine administered by admiral Duncan, has been found
too powerful; the boluses have caused so great an evacuation, that it will prove
a death stroke.

SWITZERLAND, in a fit of the Heart Burn, from some sour ingredients which
were lately served up in her mess, to the praise and glory of French cookery; but a little salt of wormwood, has done much towards neutralizing the
acid—and the paroxysm is not likely to be of any long duration.

SARDINIA, sadly troubled with ruptures, which it is said arose from a violent strain, in wrestling with a French raw head and bloody bones, who only
peeped into Piedmont, crying out fee, saw, fum, and like Cæsar with his veni,
vidi, vici, bore down every thing before him.

NAPLES, full of morbid humours, which are increasing to an alarming
degree, and it is feared that nothing less than a political plague will shortly be
the consequence of these pestilential symptoms.

TURKEY, quite paralytic; from the Divan having been gorged with an unusual quantity of opium pills, gilded with the aurum Gallicanum; which, as
for some time past they had been subject to political qualms, they were advised
by some quacks to swallow, as neutral: being told, that nothing tended more
efficaciously to allay fermentations. The diagnostics are highly unfavourable, and
unless the patient shakes off the disease in a very short time, she must inevitably
sink under it.

VENICE, rotting inch by inch, from an infection communicated by French
embraces, commonly called the fraternal hug. The distemper gains ground
apace, and nothing but a political salivation can save the whole state from falling into one universal mass of corruption.

PRUSSIA, still worse off than the Spouse of the Adriatic, being at once
most grievously smitten, both with the scurvy, and the King's Evil; the former disease having pervaded the whole Prussian army, of which many scurvy
proofs are extant, and for which they will cut a most scurvy figure in the eye
of all Europe. And, as for the latter, there never was known, nation, under
Heaven, in which the King's Evil has proved a scourge so universal; not a
King who outwardly and inwardly has so manifested evil in the vilest sense of
the word.—In short, every thing here is in a state incurable, and may Heaven
in mercy to man's kind right suddenly remove the Evil cause, that those Evil
effects may shortly be no more.

The POPE, struggling most totteringly against the Falling Sickness, but all
in vain.—We will not be so rude as to say the whore of Babylon, but the poor
old lady, call her by what name you please, is literally upon her last legs.
And the staggering blows she has lately had from her own unnatural sons, will,
certainly, lay her as flat as a flounder; & then farewell to the pastoral Bulls. In
dispensations. Benedictions. Anathemas, and the Holy Commodities of the Holy See, when the Holy sons of the church shall exclaim with Holy sorrow, that the title of his Holiness is gone forever.

RUSSIA, in a Lethargy. Ostendreaming of doing what, waking, was never
thought on.—Dead in effect to the calls of humanity, and unfeelingly deaf to
the groans of mankind! Arouse, supine, unanimated Paul. Nor become like
Frederick the object of detestation.— "Shake off this idles sleep, death's counterfeit, and look on death itself." See the carnage which Frenchmen have
spread over Europe; spurn this inglorious somnolency: awake in time to
redeem thy dying fame, and do the duty of a man to empire born.

DENMARK and SWEDEN, both seized with the Cramp; and rendered incapable of stirring hand or foot. Poor crippled objects, how contemptible in
the eyes of the active and brave.— War to them even in the best of causes,
was gall and vinegar; a neutralizing draught went down quite sweet, and
they drank it off to the dregs. How little did they think, when imbibing
the potion, that, like Sorcerer Comus's vile beverage, it would degrade the
drinkers to rank inferior to the Pigmies. Yet Sic mutamini Pecuniarli! And the
metamorphoses of those degenerate Hyperboreans affords food for laughter
to the true born sons of Old England, who, while combating a Chronical Flux, and a Sweating Sickness, by which she has been dwindled down to a Lenten likeness of her former self, yet still preserves her Stamina, sound, firm and uncorroded: and by virtue of a constitution, which neither the power of France can overturn, nor the politics of France can undermine, holds her head up secure of her recovery, while smiling hope anticipates the hour when in her convalescent state, she shall restore the healing balm of peace to a distempered and distracted world.
BRUSH.