On gout : its history, its causes, and its cure / by William Gairdner.

  • Gairdner, William, 1793-1867.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On gout : its history, its causes, and its cure / by William Gairdner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    20/318 (page 6)
    particularly about the middle periods of life, when the consequences of excesses of all kinds begin to be manifested. At page 492, the same eminent physician has the following words, which sufficiently clearly mark his opinion of the common origin of gout and struma: Strumous, lithic-acid, and gouty diseases, are all the results of mal-assimilation of the albuminous principle, and often gradually run into each other. Thus gout and struma are frequently, if not always, associated, and the gouty chalk-stones of old age may be considered as little else than the modifications of the scrofulous tu- bercle of youth, both being alike formed from mal- assimilation of the albuminous principle. Now though I cannot, from my own experience, confiiTH these statements of Dr. Prout, having, as I shall hereafter state distinctly, not found the stru- mous and tubercular diathesis generally to coincide wilh gout, and having had occasion rather to observe the truth of the connnon and proverbial saying, that gout defends against other diseases, this does not prevent me from admitting the great probability of Dr. Prout's opinion, that these diseases may be accompanied by a similar condition of the vascular system in constitutions not essentially alike, and having quite different tendencies. To this subject, I shall again call attention in a very earnest manner. It is one replete with interest. Nothing indeed more amply requites the labom- of a physician