occasioning pain in sensitive members, as, e.g., the head, and then
derives its name from the part affected, as _cephalea_, _emigranea_ or
_monopagia_. Occasionally likewise some humor runs down (_reumatizat_)
into the chest, spreading over the nerves of the breast or those of
the spine between the vertebrae, and sometimes to other places.
Hence the disease derives the general name gout (_gutta_), from its
resemblance to a drop (_gutta_) trickling or falling downward and
flowing over the weaker organs, which receive the humor. For gout
arises particularly from rheumatic causes. Now, as the humors are
rather uncontrollable (_male terminabiles_) fluids, they flow towards
the exterior and softer parts, like the flesh and skin, which receive
their moisture and being soft, dilatable and extensible, there results
some swelling. But if the humors are hard and dry, they are confined
within the interior of the organs, such as bones, nerves and
membranes: and these, being hard in themselves, do not receive the
moisture, nor suffer extension or dilatation, and thus no swelling
results. Since, therefore, the material of this variety of arthetica,
in which no swelling is present, is formed of grosser and harder
substance and is found in the vicinity of hard and cold localities, it
is dissolved slowly and the disease is not cured until this solution
takes place. That form of the disease, however, in which there is
swelling from a subtile and liquid material deposited in the soft
parts is the more quickly cured. Hence swelling is the best sign
of curability. This is most evidently true in podagra, unless the
_materies morbi_, by reason of its scarcity, produces no enlargement
of the affected part."

Quoting the words of Rhazes, Gilbert tells us that the _materies
morbi_ of gout is, for the most part, crude and bloody phlegm. Rarely
is it bilious, and still more rarely, melancholic. If, however, it is
compounded, it consists chiefly of bile mixed with a subtile phlegm,
and more rarely, of phlegm mixed with black bile (_melancholia_),
occasionally of black bile mixed with blood. The mixture of black bile
and blood or bile is very rare, and still rarer a mixture of all the
humors according to their proportion in the body.

If the color of the affected part is red, it indicates that the
_materies morbi_ is sanguineous; if greenish-yellow (_citrinus_), that
it is bilious; if whiter than the general color of the body, that the
materies