A new and successful method of treating all forms of rheumatism and gout / by John Beadnell Gill.

  • Gill, John Beadnell.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A new and successful method of treating all forms of rheumatism and gout / by John Beadnell Gill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    quently, follows an attack of rheumatic fever; it invades the smaller joints, and bring-s about much deformity; it seldom induces heart-complications; its victims are, com- monly, women. Arsenic and suljDhur are the drug's that exert the greatest amount of influence over it. The Russian bath is, however, the one cure for the disease that I am acquainted with. Even this remedy requires to be employed, cautiously, in the early stag-es of its use. The dietinff of the sufferer from chronic rheumatism or g-out, is a matter that taxes the judgment of the physician, the self-restraint of the patient. At one end of the general diet-scale stands the athlete, who affirms that he can digest a horse ; at the other, the invalid, whose only hope of avoiding physical suffering, consists in his living, exclusively, on milk. At which spot on the scale shall the patient under treat- ment be placed ? Shall his diet be animal or vegetable, or a portion of each ? At what intervals shall he eat ? What quantity may he partake of? As a rule, the diet of the rheumatic may, with safety, be reduced, at a leap, to the desired standard. Commonly, however, that of the gouty must be lowered, step by step. True feeding consists, at all times, in finding out the exact amount of food that the individual can assimilate, yet with- out the generation of impurities. The popular impression is that the more a man eats, the stronger he must become. Suppressed Rheumatism and Gout are, all-hut uni- versal ailments. Like their parent—Indigestion—they, in their results, cover the whole domain of physic. They spare neither childhood nor old age; they have no regard for the claims of sex. I have myself seen them masked under the following- forms :—Bronchitis, pneumonia, pleurisy, phthisis, several