Gout and goutiness : and their treatment / by William Ewart.

  • William Ewart
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Gout and goutiness : and their treatment / by William Ewart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    24/612 (page 8)
    QUESTIONS OF NOMENCLATURE. DIATHESIS, ARTHRITISM, HERPETISM. The ' Gouty Diathesis.''—Mere names cannot take the place of facts. The poverty of our vocabulary simply reflects the poverty of our knowledge, and this bids us to be content with the use of the word ' gout,' rather than to risk con- fusion. From this risk the recently much favoured ex- pression ' gouty diathesis' is not exempt. Its lack of definition and its emptiness have led the present writer to avoid its employment for that of straightforward expres- sions, such as ' disposition ' and ' special liability,' which do not tempt us to create a thought to fit the word. Various more or less imaginary ' turns or modes' of constitution, which were formerly described as diatheses, have now melted into thin air. The ' gouty diathesis,' which is still with us, has served our literary convenience rather than the interests of pathology. It reminds us of those capacious brackets used by mathematicians for the safe handling of unknown quantities, except that the mathematical formula works towards a solution, whilst ' diathesis ' can only perpetuate the problem. Whether the word is intended to express an inherited liability or an acquired tendency, perverting influences or the re- sulting perversion of the constitution, an explicit state- :ment in each case is indispensable for clearness.