Volume 2

Indigestion, biliousness, and gout in its protean aspects / by J. Milner Fothergill.

Date:
1881-1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Indigestion, biliousness, and gout in its protean aspects / by J. Milner Fothergill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

    15/328 (page 3)
    CHAP. I.] INTRODUCTION. 8 the circumstances, must be thrifty, sparing of his food, especially albuminoids; practise a rigorous regimen indeed, or take the alternative consequences. He may feel a sense of unjustness in his lot; but then he must remember that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, and even farther. The self-indulgence of the ancestor must be compensated by a corresponding self-denial in the descendant; the balance can only thus be restored. This is the hard line laid down for us, and we must bow before it. On the other hand the individual may build up gout for his descendants. He may practice great self-indulgence and yet himself escape. But his children will feel the consequences. Just as the here- ditarily gouty have gout-poison in their blood; so the nouveaux riches can twist a thread of gout throughout then- self-acquired possessions. The successful man of lowly origin may make a fortune for liis chUdren, and leave them a legacy of gout to boot—whether they are grateful for the latter, or not. This is an unpleasant doctrine, but there is no escape from nature's laws. It is but one more instance of the truth underlying the couplet: A dire effect of one of Nature's laws Uncliangeably connected with its causo. It is a monstrous shame ! exclaims the victim of here- ditary gout. Well, I cannot help that! The exponent of Nature's laws is not responsible for the facts. Henry Thomas Buckle held that the unpleasantness of a fact can in no way be regarded as any disproof of the said fact. The father acquires syphilis, and his child is the