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.

    28/612 (page 12)
    PATHOLOGICAL QUESTIONS.—GOUT AND METABOLISM. Any attempt to define the word ' gout' inevitably brings up the following questions : 1. Does there exist in those whose joints suffer the changes, which all are agreed to call gout, any consti- tutional morbid process capable of arising or of persisting in- dependently of the articular trouble ? 2. If any such independent morbid process exists, to what extent can it claim to be regarded strictly as a disease ? 3. What is its relation to the joint trouble—that of a cause, a complication, or a result ? If it be the cause of the arthritis, should it not be regarded as the chief part—nay, the essence of gout ? In simpler terms : Is gout merely a local affection, and are we to restrict the use of the term to the attack of pain and of swelling ? Or is it essentially a constitutional affection with local complications ? If so, has it any separate existence apart from changes in the joints ? Can it exist in a patient in the intervals between the articular seizures long before their first appearance, or long after their cessation ? Lastly, what name should be applied to it ? Slender as is the pathological support, we can hardly exclude the notion of a general and constitutional affection.