The Science of Therapeutics - Classical Homeopathy Online

Full text of "The Science of Therapeutics: According to the Principles of Homeopath...Page 538 of 653We likewise know positively that, if the body receives a largersupply of animal food than can be assimilated either by bodily ormental labor, or that, if quantities of heavy or sour wines or heArthritis. 641beer are drank, the outbreak of the disease is very much facilitabut whether such causes can occasion the disease primarily, is vequestionable. A large majority of cases occur among the male sexthe disease breaks out between the ages of thirty-five and seventyears; if it attacks persons before this time, the disease is inhIn accordance with these statements we find that gout chieflyattacks the higher strata of society.Symptoms and Course. Gout is a decidedly chronic diseasethe course of which is interrupted by acute attacks. It originatevery gradually, with a train of symptoms that do not enable us todraw reliable conclusions regarding the nature of the disease.Shortly after a period, during which a good many dietetic transgressions had been committed, the patients feel out of sorts, irrtable, ill-humored, they complain of pain in the stomach, heartbuvomiting of a sour liquid, pressure and repletion in the abdomen,hemori holds, gastric headache, and the urine is saturated. Afterthese preliminary symptoms have lasted for a longer or shorterperiod, the firstParoxysm of Gout sets in, in the vast majority of cases duringsleep, at night. The patient is roused from sleep by a violent,boring-burning pain, with a sensation as if the part were in a viat the first attack this pain is almost without an exception seatin the first articulation of the big toe of one or the other footincreasing very rapidly to such a degree of intensity, that thepatients are almost beside themselves. Very soon the painful spotshows a vivid redness and is more or less swollen ; but neither rness nor swelling ever spreads over the adjoining parts. Motion iimpossible, and external pressure causes such an intense pain thathe patients cannot even bear the least touch of the blanket. Thipain is often accompanied by a high fever which sometimes remitsBO fully on the following morning, amid a profuse perspiration, tthe day is spent with scarcely any pain. The next night, however,the pain returns, showing that the disease is still there. This cgoes on between one and two weeks, until the painfulness and redness, and soon after the swelling, disappear pretty suddenly, andpatients feel well again, even better than before the attack. Theonly striking change after the attack is the great quantity of urwhich never fail to be deposited in the urine.This first attack may terndnate the whole disease, especially ifpatient changes his present mode of living with determined firmness and consistency. If this is not done, a new attack takes pla41Ihttp://www.archive.org/stream/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog/sciencetherapeu00kafkgoog_djvu.txt