This is a rare gorgeous vintage copy. It is in very good order considering its age..... you will love this for a shelf in your clinic.

"For the successful treatment of Gout it is necessary to have a clear idea of what constitutes its various parts; notably must we differentiate between its pre-deposit symptoms and its post-deposit symptoms, for much of the want of success in its cure is due to a mixing-up of the two sets of symptoms. The symptoms that precede and lead up to the uric acid retentions in the blood are a series by themselves; those due to the uric acid in the blood and which lead up to the gouty deposit as an attack, or as chronic deposits, are a second series. The former really spell arthritic cacopepsia, while the latter are synonymous with uric acid poisoning; in the one we deal with the producing power, in the other with the product."

"1/ People who have descended from ancestors long accustomed to the use of stimulants generation after generation, the-se need stimulants in their debilitating illness, and therefore in their attacks of gout. They also need a certain amount of building up. If they are dieted too severely and deprived of their alcoholic stimulants they get weaker and weaker, and their gout gets the entire mastery ; whereas with a sustaining diet and a reasonable amount of stimulant, they get well and thrive on their ancestral constitutional basis.

2/ In certain brain-workers ( and in their immediate descendants ) whose nervous systems are exhausted, if you take away their stimulants they are apt to fare very badly.

3/ This exhaustion gout, when produced by abstemiousness, can be cured by better diet and stimulants. I knew (socially, not professionally) an eminent Q.C. who had been for many years a total abstainer, lived very sparingly, but who was a martyr to chronic gout, and a eventually died of it about 60 years of age. He was a great brain-worker, and of strong constitution. Be was often asked to take some stimulants, but strenuously refused.

4/ A gouty patient, who after-wards came under my care, was dieted by a famous anti-fat doctor, and in a week or two he developed a terrible attack of gout that completely broke his seemingly powerful constitution. During the fasting experiments of certain persons at the Royal Aquarium here in London, frequently done during the past few years, the fasters had, over and over again, attacks of gout, though water only was partaken of.

So I conclude that food and stimulants per se are not necessarily the cause of gouty attacks. The things presents itself to my mind thus : — Just as in the case of a smoky chimney almost any kind of fuel will fill the room with smoke, so in gout almost any kind of food will produce gout ; but the real fault lies, not in the fuel, but in the chimney ; not in the food, but in the organism.

I call these cases of gout Exhaustion Gout, and certainly they need stimulants.

I have reason to believe that Sir James Paget holds a view some-thing like this, though he may possibly express it differently ; for I once ordered a gentleman who consulted me for what I considered exhaustion gout, to take two glasses of sound port daily with his dessert after dinner, but he refused compliance, and walked out of my consulting-room straight over to see Sir James Paget, telling Sir James nought of having been to see me.

Clearly in these cases of exhaustion gout we have to do with a very different affair to that which yields to oranges and cold water.

A classic little text by Burnett

Small booklet 178 pages