Gout : its cause, nature, and treatment with directions for the regulation of the diet / by John Parkin.

  • Parkin, John, 1801-1886.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Gout : its cause, nature, and treatment with directions for the regulation of the diet / by John Parkin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the list of possible causes, which have been con- sidered, and this is the presence of a morbid matter in the blood; a doctrine that has received supporters, not only previously to the promulga- tion of other and different theories, but occa- sionally, also, from that time to the present. Thus Demetrius Pepagomenos, who flourished about the year 1260, and whose work was published at Paris in 1568, states, that gout is occasioned by a collection of humours in the affected joint; these humours being the product of imperfect diges- tion, and of the retention of excrementitious superfluities, which ought to have been evacuated from the system. Sydenham, the English Hippo- crates as he has been styled, entertained a nearly similar theory; while a late writer, Mr. Adam, the learned commentator of Paulus OEgineta, says, in one of his notes, in reference to this doc- trine : Notwithstanding its being little in repute, I am not afraid to declare that, in my opinion, it accords better with the phenomena of the dis- ease, and is a more successful guide to practice, than any hypothesis which has been recently advanced, Translate, remarks M. Trousseau, in what is termed a more scientific language, the work of the English Hippocrates, and you will be surprised, while admiring the description which this great man has given of the gout, how little he has left to be done after him. Tormented, for many years, by the pains of a free {franche), or