But does not the gout prevent other diseases, and is it not improper upon this account to cure it? I answer, that it prevents other diseases, as the daily use of drams prevents the intermitting fever. In doing this, they bring on a hundred more incurable morbid affections. The yellow fever carried off many chronic diseases in the year 1793, and yet who would wish for, or admit such a remedy for a similar purpose? The practice of encouraging, and inviting what has been called a "friendly fit" of the gout as a cure for other diseases, resembles the practice of school boys who swallow the stones of cherries to assist their stomachs in digesting that delicate fruit. It is no more necessary to produce the gout in the feet, in order to cure it, than it is to wait for, or encourage abscesses or natural hæmorrhages, to cure a fever. The practice originated at a time when morbific matter was supposed to be the cause of the gout, but it has unfortunately continued under the influence of theories which have placed the seat of the disease in the solids. The remedies for the gout naturally divide themselves into the following heads. I. Such as are proper in its approaching, or forming state. II. Such as are proper in _violent_ morbid action in the blood-vessels and viscera. III. Such as are proper in a _feeble_ morbid action in the same parts of the body. IV. Such as are proper to relieve certain local symptoms which are not accompanied by general morbid action. And V. Such as are proper to prevent its recurrence, or, in other words, to eradicate it from the system. I. The symptoms of an approaching fit of the gout are great languor, and dulness of body and mind, doziness, giddiness, wakefulness, or sleep disturbed by vivid dreams, a dryness, and sometimes a coldness, numbness, and prickling in the feet and legs, a disappearance of pimples in the face, occasional chills, acidity and flatulency in the stomach, with an increased, a weak, or a defect of appetite. These symptoms are not universal, but more or less of them usher in nearly every fit of the gout. The reader will see at once their sameness with the premonitory symptoms of fever from cold and miasmata, and assent from this proof, in addition to others formerly mentioned, to the propriety of considering a fit of the gout, as a paroxysm of fever. The system, during the existence of these symptoms, is in a state of morbid depression. The disease is as yet unformed, and may easily be prevented by the loss of a few ounces of blood, or, if this remedy be objected to, by a gentle doze of physic, and afterwards by bathing the feet in warm water, by a few drops of the spirit of hartshorn in a little sage or camomile tea, by a draught of wine whey, or a common doze of liquid laudanum, and, according to a late Portuguese physician, by taking a few doses of bark.