The nature and treatment of gout and rheumatic gout / by Alfred Baring Garrod.

Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The nature and treatment of gout and rheumatic gout / by Alfred Baring Garrod. 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.

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    that the occurrence of gout does not ensui’O exemp- tion from other maladies, and the latter, when they arise, have no necessary relation to the former. A careful perusal of the writings of some of the authors of the last and commencement of the present ceutuiy, must convince every thinking mind that many of the forms of gout so elaborately described, especially by Continental physicians, have no real existence in nature. It will he one object of the present treatise, to endeavour more clearly to point out and sepaiate those affections which are distinctly traceable to the gouty diathesis, to found their diagnosis on a moie philosophical basis, and thus to pave the way for a scientific and successful treatment. That the ancients were fully cognisant of the phe- nomena of gout, and in fact that it was one of the disorders the nature and treatment of which were best knovm to them, is at once evident from a perusal of their wirings. It is true that an undue stress was frequently laid upon the mere seat of the affection, and that different names were not uncommonly applied to the same disease in its different local manifestations, and also that the same name was often given to maladies of a very diverse character ; but this should not sui'prise us, considering theii- total ignorance of even the rudiments of some of those sciences which are essential to a clear understanding and separation of different pathological conditions of the body. Grout and rheumatism were doubtless often