ITS CAUSE, NATURE, AND TREATMENT.

WITH

Directions for the Regulation of the Diet.

BY JOHN PARKIN, F.R.C.P.(E.) F.R.C.S.

HONORARY AND CORRESPONDING FELLOW OF THE ROYAL ACADEMIES OF
MEDICINE AND SURGERY IN MADRID, IN BARCELONA, AND IN CADIZ ;

FELLOW OF THE ROYAL MEDICAL AND CHIRURGICAL SOCIETY

OF LONDON; GRADUATE IN MEDICINE OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF ERLANGEN ;
ETC., ETC., ETC.

"Tollere nodosam nescit Medicina podagram."-OVID, p. 1, c. 4.

HARDWICKE AND BOGUE, 192, PICCADILLY, W.,

PUBLISHERS TO THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS.

C. A. MACINTOSH,

PRINTER,

GREAT NEW STREET, LONdon.

CAUSE.

THERE is, it has been truly said, no disease concerning the nature and treatment of which physicians are so little agreed as that of gout; so that to this moment it constitutes, perhaps, the widest field for empyricism, and the hottest for warfare, of any that lie within the domain of medical science. Indeed, as another author has remarked, "no other disease has produced so many works, and occasioned so many researches ; no other has, up to the present time, baffled with more constancy the efforts, which have been incessantly made, to discover its nature; no other has been more rebellious and fatal to the greater number of theories, which the medical art has produced, during its uncertain but progressive march from age to age; no other has disconcerted more the different plans of treatment; no other has furnished such powerful weapons, or such bitter sarcasms, to the calumniators of medicine; no other, lastly, has been an equally prolific mine to empirical cupidity."+

*On the Study of Medicine, by Mason Good, M.D., Vol. 2, p. 620. + Dict. de Med. et de Chir. Prat., Tom. 3. Art. Arthrite.

B