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The best confirmation of the efficacy of our wa- 

 ters in gouty disorders , and the best description 

 of a complete crisis I can give, is certainly my own 

 case: I was born in 1770, counting, on the fatherly 

 side, four gouty generations. When thirty -five 

 years old, I began to feel this inheritance, by a se- 

 vere fit of podagra, which lasted a fortnight, after 

 which my foot remained a long time weak and ten- 

 der, but without any other ailment. A few weeks, 

 sometimes many months, elapsed, without any at- 

 tack. In 1822, the podagra disappeared suddenly 

 on the third day, and produced the most alarming 

 symptoms: cough, dyspnaea, sleeplessness, intole- 

 rable tickling of the throat; copious, puriform and 

 acid expectoration , rapid decay , cadaverous comple- 

 xion , in short, all the fore-runners of a tracheal 

 consumption. Leeches, guaiac, Plummer's powders, 

 and particularly, goat's -milk, restored me, but I 

 never lost a painful sensation of stricture in the 

 trachea, so that the air I breathed seemed to pass 

 over an ulcerated surface , and my voice , like a 

 good hygrometer, following the atmospheric varia- 

 tions, was extinct in damp weather, and returned 

 when dry. A little before my departure from Vienna, 

 in April 1826, the same symptoms returned, but with 

 less general weakness and emaciation than formerly. 

 In spite of the alarming state of my lungs and tra- 

 chea, which counter-indicated the use of the waters, and 

 attending merely to the arthritic principle, I began 

 to drink, on the 17th of May. On the fourth day, I 



