Rheumatism: its nature, causes, and cure : gout: its nature, causes, cure, and prevention / by James Alexander.

  • James Alexander
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Rheumatism: its nature, causes, and cure : gout: its nature, causes, cure, and prevention / by James Alexander. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    by its removal, need we wonder that the reten- tion of a smaller quantity of the urates in the young and healthy subject, in whom the blood is rich in fibrin and red particles, should engen- der pericarditis and other rheumatic affections, accompanied by symptoms of a more highly in- flammatory character. To recur to Braithwaite’s abridgment of Dr. Taylor’s paper. “ The author next inquires into the comparative efficacy of acute rheumatism and of Bright’s disease in producing pericarditis and other internal in- flammations. In comparing these two affec- tions, we meet with some difiiculty, arising from the fact that one of them is an acute dis- ease, and is seldom fatal, whereas the other is a chronic disease, and generally fatal. It appears to the author that the best way of avoiding this difiiculty is, by comparing fatal cases of Bright’s disease with ordinary cases of acute rheumatism. Of seventy-five cases of acute rheumatism, eight were complicated with acute pericarditis, or one in nine and a-half. Of fifty fatal cases of Bright’s disease, five were complicated with pericarditis acuta, or one in ten. Hence Bright’s disease, in the advanced stage, and acute rheumatism, ap- pear to have caused acute pericarditis in an equal proj)ortion of cases.” These statistics are ])articularly valuable as recorded practical re-
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