Memorandums and recollections on gout and rheumatism and their treatment : with a few practical remarks on sciatica and lumbago / Edward Duke Moore.

  • Moore, Edward Duke.
Date:
1864
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memorandums and recollections on gout and rheumatism and their treatment : with a few practical remarks on sciatica and lumbago / Edward Duke Moore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    suffering, and prevented any addition to the deposit in his joints, though it could not relieve them of the deposits already formed. It cannot be satisfactorily accounted for that an excess of alkaline treatment will only relieve the system of the pain of gouto and not remove the deposit of gout, except on the theory I have already advanced, viz., that a stimulated action of the biood is necessary for the removal of the deposit. I must here remark, that when I speak of the deposit in the joints, I do not mean the commonly called chronic or chalky deposit (viz., lithate of soda), but the lymphatic deposit or thickening of the joints which takes place in acute gout. In both cases I believe the basis of the deposit to be the same, viz., uric or lithic acid; but in the one case in a jluid^ in the other in a solid form. As long as the deposit is not denser than the blood, the blood may be able, under certain circum¬ stances, to absorb it by the process called endosmose; when it assumes the solid form this becomes impossible. The plan I have followed for years in the local treatment of gout bears out this theory by the success which has attended it. My custom has been to apply hot spirit lotions to the affected joint. This has the double effect of diluting the deposit and of stimulating the circulation; then the law by which a thinner fluid passes through a medium into a denser has room to ope¬ rate, and the deposit is taken up by the blood and thrown out of the system through the kidneys. Part of the deposit, pro¬ bably, passes off through the epidermis of the affected part under the influence of the spirit lotion. I can cite a case in which the law of evaporation thus effected a perfect cure. It sometimes falls to the lot of a medical practitioner to have patients who will thoroughly go hand in hand with him in carrying out the treatment he prescribes. Thus it was with Mr. S. For many years he had suffered, not severe attacks of gout, but still of sufficient force to produce a deposit and thickening of the joints of both feet and hands. I stated my ordinary treatment to him, asking him if he would submit to it, and let each limb be under the constant influence of evapo-