The treatment of rheumatic diseases by lemon juice: with illustrative cases from hospital practice / By G. Owen Rees.

  • Rees, G. O. (George Owen), 1813-1889.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The treatment of rheumatic diseases by lemon juice: with illustrative cases from hospital practice / By G. Owen Rees. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    recovered with a rapidity almost unprecedented, con¬ sidering the severity of the symptoms. Other cases, as might have been expected, though they have gone on satisfactorily to cure, have not shown themselves quite so quickly amenable to the plan of treatment. In such cases the lemon juice treatment has been adopted with such modifications as the case may have been thought to require. The progress, however, of the disease, as observed even when most obstinate, under the use of this new remedy, will, I think, be found to bear a very favourable comparison with the history of those cases in which the old plans of treat¬ ment have been had recourse to. The form of rheumatic disease in which the greatest benefit would appear to have been derived from the use of lemon juice, is that of acute rheumatism, and that form of rheumatic affection involving the smaller as well as the larger joints in acute inflammation, and known as rheumatic gout. In cases of pure gout, in which the inflammation is high, I hear that great advantage has been observed, while in subacute and more chronic forms of the dis¬ ease the same marked benefit has not been experienced. Neither do we observe in acute rheumatism that benefit accrues from continuing this remedy when the inflamma¬ tory symptoms have been checked, and debility remains. In chronic rheumatism I have apparently observed some benefit from the remedy; but lengthened expe¬ rience alone can determine the question of efficacy in so lingering and capricious a disease.