DISEASES CLASS IV. 1. 2. 15. 



chest, which they suppose a fit of the gout would relieve. But 

 in all these cases the attempt to procure a paroxysm of gout by 

 wine or aromatics, or volatiles, or blisters, or mineral waters, 

 seldom succeeds; and the patients are obliged to apply to other 

 methods of relief adapted to their particular cases. In the 

 two former situations small repeated doses of calomel, or mer- 

 curial unction on the region of the liver, may succeed, by giving 

 new activity to the vessels of the liver, either to secrete or to 

 absorb their adapted fluids, and thus to remove the cause of 

 the gout, rather than to promote a fit of it. In the last case the 

 tincture of digitalis, and afterwards the class of sorbentia, must 

 be applied to. 



M. M. In young strong patients the gout should be cured by 

 venesection and cathartics and diluents, with poultices exter- 

 nally. But it has a natural crisis by producing calcareous mat- 

 ter on the inflamed membrane, and therefore in old enfeebled 

 people it is safest to wait for this crisis, attending to the natu- 

 ral evacuations and the degree of fever; and in young ones, where 

 it is not attended with much fever, it is customary and popu- 

 lar not to bleed, but only to keep the body open, with aloes, to 

 use gentle sudorifics, as neutral salts, and to give the bark at the 

 decline of the fit; which is particularly useful where the patient 

 is much debilitated. See Arthritis ventriculi. Class I. 2. 4. 6. 

 and Sect. XXV. 17. 



Mr. Kelly, surgeon in the navy, in an ingenious treatise, 

 printed at Edinb. 1797, termed Observations on Compression 

 by the Tourniquet, advises in both inflammatory and chronic 

 rheumatism to compress the artery of the affected limb by the 

 tourniquet, for 15 or 20 minutes, relaxing or tightening the 

 bandage, as the patient seems to bear it. And in inflammatory 

 rheumatism, he advises to take blood from a vein below the 

 bandage, which he says relieves the pain and destroys the in- 

 flammation. Could not this experiment be used safely in the 

 gout of young or strong patients? and perhaps with speedy 

 success? 



When there is not much fever, and the patient is debilitated 

 with age, or the continuance of the disease, a moderate opiate, 

 as twenty drops of tincture of opium, or one grain of solid opium, 

 may be taken every night with advantage. Externally a paste 

 made with double the quantity of yest is a good poultice; and 

 booterkins made with oiled silk, as they confine the perspirable 

 matter, keep the part moist and supple, and thence relieve the 

 pain like poultices. 



The only safe way of moderating the disease is by an uniform 

 and equal diminution, or a total abstinence from fermented 



