On gout ; its history, its causes, and its cure. / By William Gairdner.

  • Gairdner, William, 1793-1867.
Date:
MDCCCLIV [1854]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    these are will sufficiently appear in the following pages. Whether my interpretations are true or false, my contemporaries must judge. But believing it may be of use to promulgate opinions earnestly and honestly formed, not so much from reading as from observation and meditation, I venture, with diffidence indeed, to add another volume to the many already written on this subject. I shall be more readily excused for calling upon physicians to read another book, if the opinion I entertain of the great frequency of gout be correct. We are apt not to consider a man as gouty, unless he lias suffered under a regular fit of the disease. I believe the gouty diathesis is often very perfectly developed in individuals who never see its local manifestations, and I am con- vinced that the strumous is not more frequent than the gouty habit.* This appears likewise to be the opinion of Dr. Prout, who, though he has * I have watched, with interest, the criticism to which the former edition of this work was subjected, with a desire to benefit by it, and have been much struck by the unanimity of assent whicli this opinion received; but 1 have been still more pleased to find that friends around me, whom the high opinion of the public has placed in the most conspicuous stations in practice, and whose judgment may there- fore be relied upon, have also pointed to it as eminently truthful, and coinciding exactly with their own experience. Sir Benjamin Brodie has taken the trouble, indeed, of writing me: “I enlirely agree with what you say as to the very frequent occurrence of the gouty diathesis. A large proportion of the persons that come to me with