In reviewing the foregoing clinical and pathological data and, alike, the inferences as to their significance, it cannot, we think, be gainsaid that, collectively, they are more readily explicable as being due to an infection than to any other morbid source. ANALOGIES BETWEEN GOUT AND THE SPECIFIC INFECTIVE ARTHRITIDES A striking parallel can be drawn between the varied manifestations of gout and those met with in _specific infections_. But, to begin with, we must recall that our attitude towards infective disorders, _e.g._, acute rheumatism, gonorrhœa, etc., is altered in that we regard them now, not as local, but _general_, systemic infections. Thus, following the revelations of bacteriologists, we now, for example, recognise that in _gonococcal_ infection not only may there be _articular_ involvement, but that _muscular_ and _nervous_ lesions may be associated therewith. This same, also, in _acute articular rheumatism_. True, its causal organism is still _sub judice_, but data accumulate as to the frequency with which the _muscles_ are involved, and, to a less extent, the sheaths of _nerves_. Take _dysentery_, again; it, too, as Sydenham pointed out, may be complicated, not only by _arthritis_, but by _myalgias_, while more recent experience emphasises the frequency with which _neuralgias_ are associated therewith. In _syphilis_, also, the association of _articular_, _muscular_, and _nerve_ lesions is well attested; and by French physicians it is insisted that, in _tubercle_, myalgias and neuralgias, as well as joint disorders, are infinitely more common than is generally realised. To sum up, this _triad_ of _arthritic_, _muscular_, and _nerve_ lesions, either serially or simultaneously, is the most common complication of _specific infections_. Now, is not this same congeries of articular, muscular, and nerve disorders precisely the clinical content of _gout_? Thus its _articular manifestations_ constitute the most striking feature of the disease. As to the _muscular_ troubles, there is a consensus of opinion as to their relative frequency. Inflammatory foci with associated uratic deposit have been found in muscles and tendons. We may here recall that the purin bases of the body exist, not only in the bound form (nucleic acid), but also _free_, especially in _muscular_ tissue, also that from such free purin bases _uric acid_ can be as readily formed as from those liberated by disruption of nucleic acid. Clinically, one meets with all forms of fibrositis in actual association with acute articular gout. Such may affect either the neck, shoulder, loin, or sciatic nerve. In their work on “Fibrositis,” Bassett Jones and Llewellyn have shown that the disorder develops with significant frequency in the victims of gout. This but confirms the conviction held by Gowers, Garrod, Hilton Fagge, and others, viz., that the muscular and nervous types of fibrositis are frequently and obviously related to gout.