EXTRACT XXXVIII. 



RHEUMATISM, ACUTE, SUBACUTE, AND CHRONIC, WITH 

 RHEUMATIC ARTHRITIS. 



IN taking up this large and varied subject, we feel our- 

 selves unable to deal with it systematically, or to do more 

 than touch on a few of its aspects which dovetail with or 

 bear on our views of the nervous system and the pathology 

 of some of its diseases. 



We shall not, therefore, attempt to consider whether its 

 materies morbi is bacterial or chemical, or both, or neither. 



Whatever its nature, wherever it may have come from, 

 whether from within the body itself, as in autotoxis, or 

 from without, from some septic source of infection, we 

 shall not wait to enquire, as the literature of these very 

 far-reaching problems is so voluminous that we have been 

 unable to do more than touch it, besides, it is now so 

 highly specialised that it must, necessarily, be left to the 

 criticism and appraisement of experts. 



On thus refraining from dealing with the very technical 

 and highly interesting department of clinical research 

 embraced in that congeries of pathological likes and dis- 

 likes, that agglomeration or gallery of contradictory 

 morbid entities known as rheumatism, we are reduced to 

 the necessity of expressing only a few thoughts suggested, 

 as above indicated, from their neural bearings on the 

 practical, clinical, and therapeutical sides of the subject. 



Guided by these limitations, we would begin by saying 

 that the main theatre for the observation of the manifold 

 phases of the disease known as rheumatism is the muscular 



