The treatment of simple acute articular rheumatism may be abandoned to palliatives and nature. Apart from complications, such cases nearly always recover under rest and careful nursing. Try and disabuse yourselves of the idea that their cure is dependent upon medicines alone; to help nature is often the best we can do. No treatment was ever invented which stopped a case of acute articular rheumatism. It cannot be stopped by bleeding, or sweating, or purging, by niter, by tartar emetic, by guaiacum, by alkalies, by salines, by salicylic acid, or by anything else. The physician can palliate the pain and perhaps shorten the attack, can control and perhaps prevent complications and stiffness of the joints, but he cannot arrest the disease. Where rest, proper diet, and warmth are enjoined, most cases will get well just as soon without as with the use of medicinal methods. Dr. Austin Flint, Sr., of New York, in support of this statement, subjected some patients, a number of years ago, to the expectant treatment, and found that they made just as rapid and just as complete recoveries as did those cases under the most active medication. Purgatives have been used in all ages in the treatment of this disease, because it was thought to be a fever. We are all but too ready to put our necks into the yoke of a theory. In old times they thought that the system ought to be reduced. Before the time of purgatives depletion was employed. This mode of treatment I will not even discuss. There is no evidence of which I am cognizant in favor of purgatives. There are very good reasons indeed why they should not be used: (1) Because they cannot possibly cure; (2) because they oblige the patient to make painful movements; and (3) because they expose him to the dangers of cold. A celebrated London physician had all his patients packed in blankets, and did not allow them to move a finger. This was going to the other extreme. There are certain cases in which purgatives are alleged to be of use, viz.: Those in which the bowels are constipated, and there is a bitter taste in the mouth. I have never seen such cases except in habitual drunkards, and in such cases a purgative does more harm than allowing the effete matter to remain in the system. Opium was once vaunted as a specific, and it was claimed that it diminished the tendency to complications in the course of the disease. Dr. Corrigan, of Dublin, said that large doses of opium were well borne--say from four to twelve grains in the course of twenty-four hours, or sometimes he advised giving as much as one grain every hour. Opium so employed does not produce narcotism, and does not constipate the bowels. More recent experience has shown that opium, of all remedies, is the most likely to cause heart complications. Some have recommended colchicum, arguing that because it does good in gout, it must, therefore, do good in rheumatism. But colchicum is not a remedy for rheumatism.