Page:Of the Gout - Stukeley - 1734.djvu/54

Rh contiguous, but tenaciously adhere together; as the several membranes likewise do. All these glands have excretory ducts into the joints. There are of these glands upon the first vertebra of the neck of the atlas; on which the head turns; on the articulations of the ribs to the spine. In the shoulder joint there is a considerable one; so in the cubit are several. So upon the radius and ulna, the wrist upon the patella of the knee, and in short upon every joint, cartilage, membrane and tenon of the whole body. For which reason these very parts are all the seat of the gout.

I find that from time to time, mankind has made some approaches toward discovering both the nature of the disease and the cure. The happy completion of it was reserv'd to our times. Among the innumerable dreses, which they have put the humor of the gout into, we may observe all along, they make it of a very subtle, burning and deleterious nature. Tho' there are great variety of opinions concerning the origin of it, some attribute it to one of the 4 fancy'd humors predominating, phlegm, b1ood, bile, melancholy; some to a straitness of the capillary vessels at the extremitys, or to their rigidity; some to the nerves and nervous fluid, some to indigestion, wind and the like; still the matter it felt that causes it, they thought