Volume 2

Handbook of geographical and historical pathology / by August Hirsch ; translated from the second German edition by Charles Creighton.

  • Hirsch, August, 1817-1894.
Date:
1883-1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Handbook of geographical and historical pathology / by August Hirsch ; translated from the second German edition by Charles Creighton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    nodules under the name of nwpoi, or swellings of stony hardness.1 We find mention already of the metastases of gout also, Galen speaking of gout flying to the stomach (/urtarp tig ti)v yaarkpa), and to the lungs,3 and Aretaeus of gouty asthma.4 It can hardly be doubted that chronic articular rheumatism, and particularly arthritis nodosa, had entered into their conception of “ podagra.” Whether any diminution of the number of cases occurred in the time of the later Empire and in the middle ages is not ascertainable from the medical writings of those periods ; the less so that “arthritis” (or as the mediaeval writers, and, so far as I know, Constantinus Africanus first, name it “ arthetis ”) would appear to have been more widely prevalent than for- merly, while the term “ podagra ” occurs less often (the disease being now and then called “ gutta ” or “ drop ”5), and in the end becomes merged almost entirely with other dis- eases of the joints under the general name of arthritis/’ The very prolix' dissertations on gout in the compendiums of Aetius,6 Paulus ./Egineta,7 and Alexander of Tralles8 (who occupies himself almost entirely, and at enormous length, with directions for treatment), as well as in the writings of the Arabians, particularly Serapion the elder,0 Rhazes,10 Abul- casim,11 Avicenna,12 and Avenzoar13 (whose work is one of the best), merely reproduce the data of the earlier Greek prac- titioners, and give us no means of forming a conclusion as to the frequency of the disease. The same is true of the works of mediaeval physicians of the West, of Constantinus Africa- 1 The word 7nupot is also used to designate bony callus. 2 * Method, med.,’ 1. c. 3 ‘ De theriaca lih. ad Pisonem,’ 1. c. 4 L. c., ed. Kiihn, p. 174. 5 The first use of the term “gutta ” that I can find is in Valescus de Tharantn, who defined it: “ Est passio in ligamentis et nervis junctuarum ex humore vel ventositate ad eos decurrentibus a membris superioribus vel circumviciuis.” It is here used, therefore, in the same sense as “gutta in oculis” applied to cataract. It is clear that the French “goutte” and the English “gout” are derived from gutta.” 6 * Sermo,’ xii, cap. vi—xlviii. 7 Lih. iii, cap. 78. 8 Lib. xii. 0 ‘Practica Tract.,’ iv, cap. 23—30, Lugd., 1525, fol. 44, seq. 10 ‘ De re medica,’ lib. ix, cap. 90, and ‘ Lib. dc aifect. juncturarum.’ 11 ‘Method, med.,’ lib. i, cap. 45. 13 ‘Canon,’ lib. iii. Fen. 22, tract. 2, cap. 55, seq. 13 ‘Theisir.,’ lib. ii, tract, vii, cap. 30, Venet., 149°> fol. 33-