OF THE RHEUMATISM

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Crams, have likewise been taken every other morning for several weekswith considerable advantage. These, with total abstinence from spirituus liquors, wine, animal food; regular hours, and keeping the feetHarm; have restored many helpless and miserable patients to active andcomfortable life.

The ingenious Mr. Parkinson recommends occasional doses of prepar-ed natron, with a view of destroying acidity hi the stomach, which heconsiders a principal cause of gout.

Au intelligent country physician has lately published a dissertation onthis deplorable disease: he asserts—" that gout differs in no essential cir-cumstance from common inflammation ; that it is not a constitutional, butmerely a local affection ; that its genuine seat is exclusively in the liga-mentous and tendinous structure;—consisting of active inflammation,assuming every diversity which constitutional and temperamental condi-tions of life and health may impart to it;—and that, if seasonably andappropriately treated, it is as easily remediable as inflammatory excite-ment on the muscular, cuticular, or any other description of organic tex-ture." As cold water is au useful application to burns and scalds, insteadof combating this formidable and ever-varying malady with alteratives,anodynes, bleeding, blisters and diaphoretics, he says, as the disease iscaused by the accumulation of heat, the obvious way of removing it isby the application of the cold. This practice is not new, but we trustit will continue to be rare. The illustrious Dr. Harvey, who elucidatedthe circulation of blood, lived to complete his seventy-ninth year; yetthat elegant and accurate writer, Dr. Atkin, says, that " it is related that,in his paroxysms of the gout, he could not be prevented from plungingthe affected joint in cold water."

A few years ago we knew a person who frequently had fits of anhereditary gout: in the thirty-seventh year of his age, he was attackedwith the usual symptoms of arthritic inflammation in his feet, and he im-mersed them in cold water. This experiment shortened the paroxysm,by putting a period to his life.

Linnams, whose labours created him a name— "never to die,"derived great relief in a severe attack of the gout by eating freely ofstrawberries: persevering in the use of this fruit every succeeding sum-mer, the recurrence of the disease became less violent, and at length neverreturned. Two cases however are mentioned by the late Dr. Pulteney,shewing that, wholesome as strawberries are universally considered, theywill notwithstanding act as a poison on some persons; occasioningsyncope, succeeded by petechial efflorescence on the skin.

OF THE RHEUMATISM.

This disease has often a resemblance to the gout. It generally at-tacks the joints with exquisite pain, and is sometimes attended with in-flammation and swelling. It is most common in the spring and towardsthe end of autumn. It is usually distinguished into acute and chronic ;or the rheumatism with and without a fever.

CAUSES.------The causes of a rheumatism are frequently the same

as those of an inflammatory fever, viz. an obstructed perspiration, theOnmoderate use of Mr'>n<: liquors, .aid the like. Sudden changes of.

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