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, 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