Contributions to practical medicine / by James Begbie.

  • Begbie, James, 1798-1869.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contributions to practical medicine / by James Begbie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of disease, which, resisting all our remedies—among which, however, colchicum was not included—renewed the painful history of the first invasion, and closed its course in destruction of the eye, and in total blindness. I know in Edinburgh, where gout is said to be an extremely rare disease, at least one other case a parallel to the above. A gentleman, now fifty years of age, belonging to a family who have had sad experience of the damaging power of gout, has for many years been deprived of sight, and can trace to iritis, ori- ginating in the prevailing diathesis of his family, the privation he now so patiently endures. In these cases of gouty iritis we learn from our best writers on the eye, that the disease neither requires nor admits that free use of mercury which is so ad- vantageous in other forms of the complaint. Mr. Lawrence mentions that he has seen cases in which mercury, carried to salivation, has been injurious rather than beneficial. He is favourable to the use of colchicum. Bloodletting requires to be employed with caution, and the treatment generally to be regulated by the prevailing diathesis. Gout is acknowledged to be the origin occasionally of ton- sillitis, of laryngitis, of bronchitis, of pleurisy, and pneumonia, and the writings of the many authors, who have treated of gout, abound with examples of these affections in intimate re- lation with it. It is singular that it is so little suspected of being the cause of inflammation of the membranes of the heart. Dr. Latham, in his admirable work on Diseases of the Heart, has made this remarkable admission : My own experience of pericarditis is mainly derived from what it is as an accompaniment of acute rheumatism. I have seen the disease, indeed, under other circumstances; but it has been very seldom, so seldom, indeed, that I have little acquaintance with other conditions, external or internal, conducing to it, I can neither tell whence to look for it, nor when to expect it, except when it occurs as a part of acute rheumatism. The