the stomach becomes
particularly affected, and the patient is troubled with flatulency,
indigestion, loss of appetite, eructations, nausea, and vomiting,
with great dejection of spirits, pain and giddiness of the head,
disturbed recollection, or muddiness of intellect, as it is termed,
with all the symptoms, which usually precede a regular fit of the
gout, yet no inflammatory affection of the joints is produced. This
state has been absurdly enough called the atonic gout, as if there
were a gout accompanied with vigour and sthenic diathesis: but the
absence of inflammation in the extremities may depend on two causes.
First, the powers producing the disease, may have debilitated the
stomach and first passages, while the vessels of the extremities are
not particularly debilitated, and the resisting force is able to
counterbalance the propelling force: in this case, no morbid degree
of distention or inflammation of the extreme vessels can take place.
Secondly, the general debility may be such, and the power of the
circulation so much diminished, that, though the extreme vessels may
be debilitated, no inflammation, or preternatural distention will
take place.

Hence, we see, that this is still the same disease; but that
physicians have erred in their explanation of the symptoms, by
regarding that as the principal part of the disease, which is only a
symptom.

We have seen then, that by the theory which has been unfolded, all
the symptoms of this hitherto mysterious disease are plainly and
naturally explained. We shall next see if the only method of cure
which experience warrants, cannot be explained upon the same
principles.

If, on entering this part of the subject, any one should expect that
I should furnish him with a receipt, consisting of certain drugs,
which swallowed, will cause this terrible disease to disappear, and
health to take its place, he would be very much mistaken; for, can
any person in his senses suppose that a disease, which he has been
almost his whole life in contracting, and an exhausted state of the
excitability, which has been gradually brought on by years of
intemperance, can be dispersed by a pill, a powder, or a julep? Or,
if the symptoms could be relieved by medicine, which they often may,
can he suppose, that they will not return, if the same mode of
living, which first brought them on, be continued?

I shall, however, proceed to give some directions, which if rigidly
persevered in, will