b THE BEADSHAW LECTURE 



menced its work. And now they have passed 

 away like a dream, from which the slumberer 

 awakes to enter into new realms of thought. Yet 

 great was their influence, and mighty were the 

 struggles made by observers to force their irre- 

 gular cases under the unsympathetic wings of 

 some particular diathesis. 



The Gouty Diathesis. 



Of these, the gouty is almost the last survivor, 

 bolstered up by its aristocratic relations, and even 

 more by the parvenu's wealth, waiting, as I 

 believe, only for the discovery of a particular 

 ferment which causes the precipitation of sodium 

 urate in the most used joint of an overfed and 

 perhaps bibulous person. 



In this relation it may be interesting to quote 

 Professor Lay cock's account of the diathesis of 

 the revered founder of this great museum. The 

 Professor of Medicine of Edinburgh thus describes 

 his brother Scot : 



John Hunter was of the strumous arthritic diathesis with 

 a nervous element also. [A little mixed you will observe.] 

 His florid complexion indicated the vascular element, while 

 his rounded forehead, thickened alee nasi, thick upper lip, and 

 caries teeth in the upper jaw marked the strumous ten- 

 dency. 



