r,
and boil down in the best wine until reduced in volume to one-half.
Let the patient take this freely on an empty stomach until cured."

Another more elaborate prescription consists of a long list of
ingredients, including burnt sponge, saponaria, the milk of a sow
raising her first litter, with numerous simple herbs, and the sole
object for which this nonsensical farrago is introduced here is to add
that both these prescriptions are copied from the surgery of Roger. It
is important too to remark here that we owe to Roger the introduction
of iodine, under the form of burnt sponge, into the treatment of
goiter.

In the failure of medical treatment, Gilbert directs the employment
of surgical means, e.g., the use of setons, or, in suitable cases,
extirpation of the goiter with the knife. If, however, the tumor is
very vascular, he prefers to leave the case to nature rather than
expose the patient to the dangers of a bloody operation. The whole
discussion of goiter is manifestly a paraphrase of the similar chapter
of Roger, who also introduced into surgical practice the use of the
seton.

In Gilbert's chapter entitled "_De arthretica passione et ejus
speciebus_," we are introduced to the earliest discussion by an
English physician of that preeminently English disease--gout. We may
infer, too, from the length of the discussion (thirty or more pages)
that this was a disease with which Gilbert was not only familiar, but
upon the knowledge of which he prided himself greatly. Indeed, it is
one of the few diseases of the Compendium in which the author assumes
the position of a clinician and introduces examples of the disease
and its treatment taken from his own clientele. We shall, therefore,
follow our author here rather more carefully and literally than usual,
that we may learn the views of an English physician of the thirteenth
century on, perhaps, the most characteristic disease of his
countrymen.

Gilbert says: "Arthetica is a disease of the joints arising from a
flux of humors descending into their continuity (_concathenationem_).
The name is derived from the Latin _artus_, a joint, and the disease
comprehends three species, viz., _sciatica_, disease of the scia,
or the ligaments uniting the spine with the hip; _cyragra_, disease
of the joints of the hands; and _podagra_, disease of the bones
and joints of the foot, due to the descent of humors into their
continuity. Sometimes, too, the disease affects other organs,