SYMPTOMS.——A fit of the gout is generally preceded by indigestion, drowsiness, belching of wind, a slight head-ach, sickness, and sometimes vomiting. The patient complains of weariness and dejection of spirits, and has often a pain in the limbs, with a sensation as if wind or cold water were passing down the thigh. The appetite is often remarkably keen a day or two before the fit, and there is a slight pain in passing urine, and sometimes an involuntary shedding of tears. Sometimes these symptoms are much more violent, especially upon the near approach of the fit; and some observe, that as is the fever which ushers in the gout, so will the fit be; if the fever be short and sharp, the fit will be so likewise; if it be feeble, long, and lingering, the fit will be such also. But this observation can only hold with respect to very regular fits of the gout. The regular gout generally makes its attack in the spring, or beginning of winter, in the following manner: About two or three in the morning, the patient is seized with a pain in his great toe, sometimes in the heel, and at other times in the ancle or calf of the leg. This pain is accompanied with a sensation as if cold water were poured upon the part, which is succeeded by a shivering, with some degree of fever. Afterwards the pain increases, and fixing among the small bones of the foot, the patient feels all the different kinds of torture, as if the part were stretched, burnt, squeezed, gnawed, or torn in pieces, &c. The part at length becomes so exquisitely sensible, that the patient cannot bear to have it touched, or even suffer any person to walk across the room. The patient is generally in exquisite torture for twenty-four hours, from the time of the coming on of the fit: he then becomes easier, the part begins to swell, appears red, and is covered with a little moisture. Towards morning he drops asleep, and generally falls into a gentle breathing sweat. This terminates the first paroxysm, a number of which constitutes a fit of the gout; which is longer or shorter according to the patient’s age, strength, the season of the year, and the disposition of the body to this disease. The patient is always worse towards night, and easier in the morning. The paroxysms however generally grow milder every day, till at length the disease is carried off by perspiration, urine, and the other evacuations. In some patients this happens in a few days; in others, it requires weeks, and in some, months, to finish the fit. Those whom age and frequent fits of the gout have greatly debilitated, seldom get free from it before the approach of summer, and sometimes not till it be pretty far advanced. REGIMEN.——As there are no medicines yet known that will cure the gout, we shall confine our observations chiefly to regimen, both in and out of the fit.