Strictures on the gout: with practical advice to the gouty people of Great Britain / [Samuel Wood].

  • Wood, Samuel
Date:
1775
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Strictures on the gout: with practical advice to the gouty people of Great Britain / [Samuel Wood]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/80 (page 11)
    happinefs can there be, even for the rich, in fuch a (late ? or for the man who before was happy in profecuting his views in life, hoping, through his induftry and care, to obtain the means of enjoying the comforts thereof, and to provide fomething for his pofterky, who now finds himfelf totally incapacitated, through this devouring harpy, from purfuing the means for the accompiifflment of thcfe naturaiiy-ddirable ends ? or, what for the poor man, comfortable, in the daily provifion his labour procures, now made wretched ! Thefe diftrefsful fceries, daily before the eyes of the phyfician, muff call forth the compaffion of the feeling man ; and this moft unhappy flate of the fufferers may, I con¬ ceive, have been the reaion that has induced the faculty to labour at the inveitigation of a dif- eafe, whofe effects are fo fevere and lading, and replete with fuch terrible confequences ; and great mu ft be the merit of fuch authors, who have, by their works, endeavoured to give ge¬ neral information to their brethren, of what fell within their practice, that might throw any new light upon the fubjedt. This, no doubt, has improved practitioners, but furnifhed little or nothing for the contemplation of the patient; for it has been too generally the practice of phyfical authors to write to the faculty only, and in Latin; and, when in Engiiffl, their works have been loaded with technical terms, and therefore underftood by the learned and initiated alone •, to the bulk of mankind, and to the afflicted, they have been unintelligible no man could reply to what he did not compre¬ hend, or reafon on a matter of which he had no conception •, and from thefe works no know¬ ledge could be derived to the generality of the afflicted v no idea could be obtained of thecaule C 2 of