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.

    36/612 (page 20)
    and narcotics is hastened by steam and electricity. Our habits and occupations, our expenditure of energy, our food, have all undergone alterations. In a word, the artificial conditions which tend to modify the reaction of the organism have grown at a rate previously unexampled ; and although it were difficult to prove that we differ in any wide measure from generations which have preceded us, a belief prevails that in certain directions, particularly in that of the nervous system, the influence of our sur- roundings has not been inoperative,* and that the quality of the vital reactions to stimulation has undergone slight modifications. Passing, however, from this large and debatable subject, we may point to definite influences modifying in a calcu- lable degree the prevalence and the type of the affection. Indeed, within the recollection of those who can look back far enough, perceptible changes have taken place in the prevalence of gout, in the type of the gouty attack, and in the peaiUarities of the gouty state. THE ATTENUATION OF ACQUIRED GOUT. The relative prevalence of each of the diseases of middle age is now increased by the accession of lives such as were previously cut short by typhus, typhoid, diphtheria, etc. Thanks to modern hygiene and preventive medicine, the gouty period of life is now reached by these vulnerable constitutions, among whom many are prone to goutmess or the bearers of a gouty inheritance, and therefore likely to estabhsh a gouty posterity. The type of the affection has also been exposed to modi- fying influences in the individual and in the race. The * The views of Dr. Pye-Smith, which differ slightly from the above, might be read with interest. C/. Lumleian Lectures on ^Jiology : Harveian Oration and Memoir. London : J. and A. Churchill, iSgS-