Thus how much more swiftly would the clinical distinctness of chronic articular gout from _rheumatoid arthritis_ have been realised had Sydenham’s dicta in the seventeenth century regarding this intricate problem been duly appreciated. Up to his time, the clinical descriptions of rheumatoid arthritis appeared now under gout, now under rheumatism. As for Sydenham himself, he placed the disorder, nosologically speaking, under _chronic rheumatism_, of which he believed it to be an _apyretic_ variety. But the importance of his researches resides in this—he pointed out that it differed essentially from _gout_, but that, in resemblance thereof, it might endure throughout life, its course diversified by remissions and exacerbations. Also he tells us that its excruciating pains, even when of prolonged standing, sometimes cease spontaneously, noting also that the joints are, so to speak, turned over, and that there are nodosities, especially on the inside of the fingers. Nevertheless, if we except Musgrave’s work (1703), “Arthritis ex Chlorosi,” which included some undoubted examples of _rheumatoid_ or atrophic arthritis, no note was taken of Sydenham’s contention until a century afterwards. True, John Hunter in 1759 described the morbid anatomy of _osteoarthritis_ or the hypertrophic forms of arthritis deformans, but not until 1868 was the true significance of Sydenham’s work appreciated, a most generous tribute being then accorded him by the great French physician Trousseau. In 1800 Landre Beauvais published his clinical description of _rheumatoid_ arthritis under the title “goutte asthenique primitif.” That Beauvais, as Sir Archibald Garrod contends, included under this title some cases of true _gout_ is beyond doubt. But the words “Doit admettre une nouvelle espèce de goutte,” go far to justify Charcot in his claim that Beauvais, despite the title of his brochure, fully realised that the disease differed from gout. A few years later (1804-1816), Heberden, in his Commentaries, insisted on the essential distinctness of rheumatoid arthritis from gout. Thus he wrote, “The disease called chronical rheumatism, which often passes under the general name of rheumatism and is sometimes supposed to be _gout_, is in reality a very different distemper from the genuine gout, and from the acute rheumatism, and ought to be carefully distinguished from both.” As to its salient features he noted its afebrile nature, the lack of redness in the skin over the affected joints, the relative absence of pain, and that it displayed no special tendency to begin in the feet. It was further marked by a protracted course involving severe crippling, while the peculiar nodosities on the fingers are still associated with his name.